


crescent noon

by hammerhorror



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Pennywise (IT), Childhood Friends, Coming of Age, F/M, Feelings Realization, Good Parents Maggie & Wentworth Tozier, Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Jealousy, Jessica Hanlon & Will Hanlon Live, M/M, Pining, Small Towns, Time Skips
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2020-11-06
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:14:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 42,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26651260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hammerhorror/pseuds/hammerhorror
Summary: you and i were born like the breaking day. all our seasons, all our green septembers burn away. slowly we’ll fade into a sea of midnight blue, and a falling crescent noon.(richie and eddie are two boys in a mountain town. the years pass.)
Relationships: Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Bill Denbrough/Mike Hanlon, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 12
Kudos: 33





	1. prologue / twelve

**Author's Note:**

> this fic takes place in the southeastern kentucky region of appalachia. for those unfamiliar, particularly if you don’t live in the united states, appalachia is a mountainous region that stretches from the south to certain areas of the north. it is largely associated with “redneck” “trailer trash” “white trash” culture—rural towns, heavily religious communities, conservative politics, coal mining, and extreme poverty. 
> 
> this fanfiction is heavily inspired by my own childhood primarily in harlan county, kentucky. richie’s home is modeled after my great-grandmother’s, where all of my happiest memories are from. eddie’s home is modeled after my own childhood home before my family moved. i hope you enjoy it and if you have any questions about any terminology or appalachian slang/concepts, please let me know. 😊
> 
> this initially was going to be a 10kish reddie Only one-shot (LOL) but it grew into something a little more? and while it still is largely told from a reddie angle, the narrative is interspersed with the POVs of other losers. 
> 
> CONTENT WARNING, PLEASE READ: canon typical sonia kaspbrak abuse, mentions of small southern town typical homophobia, racism, and antisemitism, the implication of unhealthy relationship dynamics between richie and eddie when they get older (they’re working it out!!!), snake handling churches—if you are wary about snakes in general, please research snake handling churches before reading. there is a part of the story where they discuss a local legend murder/suicide of two gay men that may or may not have actually happened. referenced character death and a general fear of dying/losing a loved one to illness or injury is present throughout the narrative. occasional recreational alcohol/drug use. the explicit discussion of a character family member committing suicide, but no suicidal ideation/intent/action by any of the core characters. a portion of the narrative deals with some disordered eating behavior. i believe that sums it all up.

**prologue (ten)**

The Toziers live in an old house of brick and clapboard built before the Depression with a crooked but functional chimney and a magnolia tree blooming in the front yard. To the rear of the house is a modestly sized cornfield. Richie and his friends are often tasked with sitting on the front porch and shucking corn for hours on end, except Eddie, who snaps peas from the garden because he doesn’t like the way the corn silk feels in his hands.

Behind the cornfield is a grassy pasture and a steep hill that leads to a large stretch of untamed woods. Some of it belongs to the Toziers and some of it belongs to another family, but Richie has never been sure where the invisible line between the two properties sits. The kids play there with relative freedom, though they once trekked too far into the depth of the woodland and a ferocious watchdog latched its teeth onto the hem of Stan’s shorts. Mrs. Maggie Tozier was so mad at Richie for leading his friends astray that she threatened to take a switch to his legs, but she didn’t, because she never did. Empty threats echoing her own upbringing were the worst punishment Richie ever received for any misbehavior.

Stan doesn’t like to play in the woods much after that, but Eddie is fine with it, so Richie will call Eddie early on summer mornings when he feels like exploring. It usually takes Maggie talking Mrs. Sonia Kaspbrak down from some paranoid fantasy of Eddie breaking his neck or getting tangled up in overgrown kudzu and dying of an asthma attack before anyone can get him out. Maggie insists the boys will be fine, just send Eddie over with his allergy medicine and she’ll make sure he takes it before they go out. Sonia gives in and Richie rides his bike over the railroad track, around the church, and over the bridge to fetch Eddie and then escort him back to the Tozier land.

“I have bandages, and gauze, and some antiseptic spray in my fanny pack,” Eddie says, “so if we get hurt, I can take care of it.” He moves a cornstalk out of his way that then snaps back like a rubber band and hits Richie in the face. It’s faster to walk through the cornfield.

Richie doesn’t mind when Eddie does things. That is to say, if Eddie accidentally hits him in the face with a cornstalk, it’s fine, because it’s Eddie. “Why do you carry all that stuff with you?” he asks.

“Because I wanna be prepared, in case we get hurt,” Eddie replies. He shivers when some corn silk touches his arm.

“My mom said your mom treats you like you’re made of glass,” Richie says, too young to understand that his mother wouldn’t want him repeating things like that.

“She just wants to take care of me and make sure I don’t die,” Eddie says, sounding rather tense.

“Do you worry about dying?” Richie asks.

They reach the end of the cornfield, halfway to their destination. Eddie brushes off his shorts and adjusts his socks. “Of course I do,” he says. “Don’t you? Doesn’t everyone? I don’t wanna die.”

“I don’t want to die either,” Richie says thoughtfully, “but I don’t think about it too much. Only when I’m at church.” Richie’s family goes to the only Methodist church in town which is about a three-minute walk from Eddie’s house, but Sonia doesn’t allow Eddie to go to church. Something to do with his dad, Richie doesn’t fully understand it yet, but his parents mention it from time to time in quiet voices when they think Richie can’t hear, like it's a big secret. Maggie also says Methodists are nicer than Southern Baptists and Richie doesn’t really understand that either.

“My mom hates churches,” Eddie says.

The pasture grass is overgrown because Richie’s dad hasn’t cut it down since spring. It makes Richie’s knees itch, but he doesn’t get bothered by that kind of stuff like Eddie does.

“Church is pretty boring,” Richie says. Eddie looks at him inquisitively. His face is covered with summertime freckles. His eyes are big and have this glint of amber in them when the sun hits them. Richie told him once he had big, brown eyes like a cow, and Eddie had gotten his feelings pretty hurt from that. Richie tried to explain that the way he sees it, cows have the most beautiful eyes of any animal he’s ever seen, but Eddie didn’t really want to hear it.

“You believe in all that stuff?” Eddie asks, head tilted.

Richie shrugs. “I guess so.”

Eddie makes an indiscernible “hmmph” noise and doesn’t say anything else. They walk in silence until they reach the top of the hill and take a break under the shade of the crabapple tree so that Eddie can take a puff of his inhaler.

They cross into the woods, which always feels like crossing into another world. Like those old cartoon fantasy movies Maggie is always putting on for them to watch when they eat lunch. Green isn’t just green, it’s a little bit blue, too. The sun is fractured through the trees, always manages to hit Eddie’s face just right no matter the trajectory.

“There’s a crevice that a tree fell over during that big storm the other day,” Richie says. “We could try and cross it. Then you could tell Big Bill you did something he was too scared to do.”

Eddie looks unsure, but Richie knows he has a weak spot in his heart for Bill. It’s easy to exploit. “I don’t know,” he says, chewing on the skin of his thumb. “What if I fall?”

“I won’t let you fall,” Richie says confidently.

“Okay fine, but you have to do it first.”

That’s fair enough, Richie figures, and Eddie agreed quicker than he was expecting. Richie’s balance is okay and he’s not scared to fall into the lush, overgrown tangle of vines and bushes at the bottom of the shallow crevice. It’s probably about an eight-foot drop, but the landing would be soft, like jumping onto a giant, dewy bed.

With each careful step, he kicks moss off the bark of the tree so that Eddie’s shoes will grip better when it’s his turn to cross. He holds his arms out to balance himself while Eddie stands at the upheaved tree roots, clutching the bottom of his shirt nervously.

Once Richie makes it to the other side, he spins around and gives Eddie an encouraging thumbs up. “It’s really easy, Eds!”

“Please don’t call me that. Okay, I’m going to do it.” Eddie takes a hesitant step onto the body of the tree.

All of Richie’s motivational affirmations fall on deaf ears, as Eddie is so focused on each of his perfectly calculated steps it seems like he has shut off his hearing completely. Once he reaches the halfway point, his face blanches as he realizes he is neither close enough to the front end or rear end of the tree to make a quick jump back to solid ground.

“It’s fine, Eddie, you’re doing a really good job!” Richie says, but he can see the nerves starting to set in and give Eddie a distinctly wobbly gait.

Eddie successfully makes it three-quarters of the way across, much more confident once he notices his progress, when Richie hears a strange bird call which steals his attention. It’s probably something Stan will want to see, which may incentivize him to join them for future playdates. He walks in the direction of the call, squinting his eyes and looking up in the trees to see if he can spot the elusive creature.

It is only when he hears the dense tearing sound of dry rotted wood and Eddie desperately crying out for him that he thinks to turn around, just in time to see Eddie stumbling at the very end of the tree. He runs, tearing his legs up on a sticker bush, and grabs Eddie’s outstretched hand.

“I can’t believe you fucking left me!” Eddie cries. They are still at the tender age where cursing is not quite second nature to them, only reserved for desperate circumstances, so Richie realizes he’s really screwed up. There are tears in Eddie’s big, doe eyes. “If you ever leave me again, Richie, I’ll kill you.”

It isn’t a jab or a joke. Richie has never seen Eddie look so gravely resolved before. He pulls Eddie towards him, and they fall together to the ground, Richie on his back and Eddie lying on top of him.

“Don’t ever leave me again,” Eddie says quietly, clutching at the neck of Richie’s shirt so hard that his knuckles turn white.

“I’ll never leave you.” Eddie stares Richie down, brow furrowed and eyes still despondent and teary. “Eddie, I promise I’ll never, ever leave you,” Richie says, placing his hand on the back of Eddie’s neck and pulling him into a hug.

They stay like that until they catch their breath.

**twelve**

Ben is a voracious reader. He learned the word vo-ray-shus from one of the lofty, densely complicated books he checked out from the library. Everything Ben learns, he imparts onto his friends, so Richie figures that it’s okay if he never touches a book again in his life since he learns everything he needs to know from Ben.

“Have you guys ever heard of snake handling?” Ben asks one day at lunch.

Eddie grimaces and shrinks into himself. Richie notices this, and then says, “I’ve heard my parents mention it before but they said it wasn’t appropriate to talk about, whatever the fuck that’s supposed to mean.”

“It’s where people go to church and they hold snakes,” Ben says.

“Live sn-sn-snakes?” Bill balks, eyes widening with terrified curiosity. “Th-that’s really what they d-do there?” he asks.

Ben nods. “You ever seen a Holiness church before?”

Eddie shakes his head while Richie and Bill both nod.

“It’s those ch-churches where they d-d-dance around and holler,” Bill explains to Eddie. Bill is always explaining things to Eddie. Bill has shot up in height like overgrown cattails and now he has to lean down to talk to everyone, but he especially has to lean down to talk to Eddie, and Richie feels foul when he sees this.

“There’s one by my house,” Richie says, arms crossed, leaning away from Bill and Eddie as best he can. “They’re always screaming in there. Sometimes I can hear it from my room. So they have snakes there?” he asks Ben.

“Not necessarily in that specific church, but some of them do have snakes. The ones way back in the mountains usually. They hold the snakes during services and if the snake doesn’t bite them, it means they’re anointed.”

“What the fuck does anointed mean?” Richie asks.

Ben and Bill shrug in unison. Eddie asks Richie, “Isn’t your family religious?”

“Sure, but we aren’t fucking crazy and holding snakes and shit,” Richie says defensively.

“I think anointed is where they put oil on you and then it makes you holy or something like that,” Ben says. “So basically, if the snake doesn’t bite them, it means they are blessed by God.”

“So wh-what if the snake d-d-d-does bite them?” Bill asks.

“Then they weren’t anointed. And they’re not allowed to go to the hospital or anything, because it was the will of God for them to get bit by the snake. And if they die, then that was the will of God, too,” Ben responds. He’s all excited and talking with his hands. Bill is overcome with morbid curiosity, Eddie appears genuinely distressed, and Richie feels very strange about the entire conversation.

Then Richie remembers what he had overheard his parents saying about snake handlers. “My mom and dad said there was a girl at our schools whose parents both died handling snakes,” he says. “She had to go into the foster system.”

“That’s t-t-terrible,” Bill whispers, horrified.

Eddie hugs himself and makes a discontented sound. “I’m glad my mom doesn’t make me go to church,” he says quietly. It would probably cause problems if any of their classmates heard him say this. It’s not normal for a child to be forbidden from church in this neck of the woods.

“Is it weird that I kind of want to go to one of those churches?” Ben asks, and he kind of sounds like he’s talking to himself.

“Beverly Marsh,” Richie says abruptly. The others all turn to look at him. “Her parents used to go to one of those churches.” Ben flushes a deep scarlet across his entire face at the mere mention of Beverly’s name. “You should ask her about it.”

“Y-yeah,” Ben stammers.

The conversation turns to something comfortable and mild. Wondering what Stan will think about snake handling churches when they tell him everything they learned. What they should do after school—play video games or go to the park?

Then the lunch bell rings and sends them back to class. 

**+**

The four of them wait for Stan out on the concrete steps at the front entrance of the school, until they notice a large group of kids running towards the west end of the building, a secluded, hilly stretch of grass that has been poorly contained with a broken gate to keep people out of the playground after school hours. Teachers are rarely seen over there most days and there is often some kind of fight or other strange adolescent ritual going on after the bell rings.

They decide to follow the crowd and are shocked to see Stan—docile, rigid, well-mannered Stanley Uris—screaming like a maniac as he is throttled by local delinquent, future burnout Patrick Hockstetter. It isn’t a fearful type of scream, however; it sounds like pure, unbridled, manic rage.

“Holy shit, that’s Stanley! What do we do?!” Eddie asks frantically, grabbing Richie’s arm and shaking him. He pulls his inhaler out of his fanny pack and takes a puff as his breath becomes more and more labored.

Richie doesn’t know what else there is to do, so he barrels down and runs at Hockstetter full force, knocking him to the ground and freeing Stan from his grasp. Eddie, Bill, and Ben follow close behind, helping Stan to his feet and hoping that the five of them can withstand one of Hockstetter.

It’s Bill who first notices that there is another victim close by, the gentle and studious new kid, Mike Hanlon, who is on the ground with a bloody nose. He moves to stand in between Hockstetter and Mike.

“Come on, Hockstetter, just fuck off,” Richie says, sufficiently terrified but also exasperated. It’s nearly every day with this guy.

Stan’s voice is muffled by the hand he is holding over the blood pouring out of his nose when he says, “He called Mike—I can’t even fucking repeat it!” His voice is shaky, like he’s going to start crying.

Hockstetter is silent for a moment, sneering. “Whatever. You’re lucky your faggot friends were here, Uris,” he says, clearly bowing out because he doesn’t have any backup. He shoves his way through the crowd of gawkers and calls over his shoulder, “Don’t worry, Hanlon, we’ll see each other again.” The spectators begin dispersing with the realization there will be no more violence.

“Mike, a-are you o-o-okay?” Bill asks, crouching down and placing a gentle hand on Mike’s shoulder. “He… w-w-went after y-you, huh…”

“Sure did.” Mike catches some blood in his hand. There are tears in his eyes, but he’s clenching his jaw like he’s keeping them locked behind a floodgate. “My parents told me this would happen if I started going to public school in this town.”

“You’ve been homeschooled up till this year, right?” Eddie asks, unzipping his fanny pack and pulling out a square of gauze. He sits down cross-legged in front of Mike and pinches it over his nose. “Here, hold this.”

Mike obliges, replacing Eddie’s fingers on his nose with his own. “Yeah. I begged my parents to let me come to school like all the other kids. I really don’t want to tell them about this. They’re going to be so upset…” He pauses and looks up at Stan. “Hey. You didn’t have to get involved, but you did. Thank you.”

“You don’t have to thank me,” Stan says, taking a piece of gauze from Eddie’s outstretched hand and pinching it over his nose. “It isn’t right, the things people say.”

Richie puts his arms around Stan’s shoulders and vigorously shakes him, then grabs his hand and holds his arm up like he just won a wrestling match. “So you’re saying ol’ Stanley stood up to Patrick Hockstetter?”

“Holy shit,” Ben marvels. “That guy gives you hell every day, Stan.”

Mike nods. “Everyone else just stood by and watched,” he says quietly, sadly. “Hockstetter knocked me flat on my ass and then Stan came running around the corner like a bat out of hell. Then he got knocked flat on his ass too. Hockstetter picked him up and I thought he was gonna get shaken right to death.” They all share a nervous bought of laughter.

“Y-y-you just stick w-w-with us, o-okay, Mike?” Bill brushes some dirt off the front of Mike’s shirt.

“Yeah!” Ben says enthusiastically. “We may all get our asses kicked, but at least we’ll be together!” They all laugh again, a happier laugh this time.

They invite Mike over to Richie’s house to play video games, which he happily accepts.

**+**

Maggie kneels before Stan and Mike and wipes their faces clean with a warm washrag. “Some children aren’t raised right,” she says, giving each one a pat on the cheek. “But you boys were. I’m going to call your parents and let them know the situation.”

They thank her for her kindness and join the others in the living room, where Richie, Bill, and Ben are playing a brutal round of _Mario Party_. Eddie is curled up on the couch reading some of Richie’s comics, because his mom said he shouldn’t play video games for too long or it’ll damage his eyes and give him chronic migraines.

Mike explains that he and his family live on a farm on the outskirts of town. There aren’t many farms in this area on account of the mountainous terrain, but the Hanlons own a beautiful stretch of farmland and live in an old farmhouse with a metal roof and pine siding painted white that has been in their family since the 1960s. They have a lot of livestock, including a mama goat that’s going to have babies soon. “You guys should come over after she’s given birth so we can play with the kids,” he says.

Bill, Richie, Ben, and Stan all nod and generally agree that this sounds like a great idea. Eddie is a bit reticent, because he’s never been on a farm before and he needs to account for all his various allergies.

“His mom’s convinced him he’s allergic to everything on God’s green earth,” Richie says, aggressively mashing the ‘A’ button on his N64 controller for a minigame that requires his character to jump up and down repeatedly.

“Oh,” Mike says, and he politely waits for Eddie to explain this himself.

“She _knows_ what I’m allergic to because I’m her kid and she takes me to the doctor, asshole,” Eddie snaps, stretching his leg out as far as it will go to kick Richie on the back of the head, which ruins his ‘A’ button streak.

“Goddammit, Eddie!” Richie yells, and then Maggie threateningly sticks her head around the corner, phone pressed to her ear and hellfire in her eyes. “Sorry, Mom.”

“Any _way_ ,” Eddie says after Maggie has left them alone, “I would really like to go to your family’s farm. I just have to ask my mom if it’s okay is all.”

“I’ll have my mom call your mom?” Mike suggests, to which Eddie nods and gives him a dimpled smile.

The winner of their _Mario Party_ round is Bill. He decides that he’s played enough and would rather sit on the couch with Eddie and read comics, so he offers his controller to Mike. Stan takes the fourth controller and they start another round, though Richie’s heart isn’t in it. He’s distracted, listening to Eddie explain the story behind his favorite _X-Men_ character to Bill.

They play games long into the evening until it’s time for everyone to go home. Bill and Ben live relatively close, so they ride home on their bikes. Maggie drives Eddie, Stan, and Mike home and returns to see that Richie is sulking in his room.

She gives the door a light knock. “Can I come in?” she asks gently, but Richie doesn’t answer. “I’m coming in anyway,” she says and opens the door all the way. Richie is sitting on his bed with his knees hugged up to his chest.

“Hi Mom,” he grumbles.

Maggie sits down at the foot of his bed and reaches out to play with his hair. “What is it, sweetheart? Didn’t you have a good day with your friends?”

“It’s embarrassing,” Richie says. Maggie waits for him to continue. “Tell me why… I feel jealous when Eddie pays attention to Bill and not to me,” he says into his legs.

“Oh…” Maggie sighs. “Well… jealousy is a very normal feeling, Richie. It’s one that we all have to deal with at one point or another. I know Eddie has always been your favorite. Just try and remember that the friendship you have with him and the friendship he has with Bill are both unique and special in their own way.”

Richie looks up at her, mouth twisted down in a frown. “Yeah,” he says.

“It’s okay if you don’t really get it. You will when you’re older,” Maggie says, and she pulls Richie into a hug. “Just continue being a good friend to everyone, okay?”

Sounds easy enough, Richie figures. He holds onto his mother and cries it all out.

Eddie lives in a one story house across the river from the Methodist church, with light blue Masonite siding and open crawlspace where a stray cat once gave birth to five kittens—Eddie cried his eyes out when Sonia said they couldn’t keep one. _Because of your allergies, Eddie-bear_. The shingles on the roof are starting to split, so it’s time to get the roof replaced.

The contractor who she called to replace the roof is a man called Mr. Marsh. Richie and Eddie are sitting on the front porch sipping lemonade—Sonia still cares a bit to keep up appearances, so she agreed to let Richie come over and play to give off the impression to Mr. Marsh that she runs a happy household, not that she _really_ cares about _his_ opinion—he’s a foul man with a poor moral constitution, but he offers the cheapest prices for home improvement work around town.

Since Eddie isn’t allowed any sugar, his lemonade is actually just cold water and lemon juice. He and Richie sit with their legs hanging off the side of the porch and talk about how excited they are to camp out in Richie’s backyard this weekend.

Mr. Marsh’s daughter Beverly is sitting in the bed of her father’s truck, as she has been known to accompany him on weekend jobs when her mother is working long shifts at the Corner Café in town. Eddie asks his mother if it’s okay for Beverly to join them on the front porch for lemonade. With a tight-lipped frown, Sonia reluctantly agrees.

“Thank you very much,” Beverly says as she gratefully accepts a cold glass of lemonade. Sonia doesn’t say anything, just gives a short burst of air out of her nose and walks out to the front yard to monitor Mr. Marsh’s handiwork.

Richie thinks Beverly is probably the coolest person at their school. He once saw her kick Henry Bowers in the stomach so hard it knocked the breath clean out of him. There’s something charming about the way she crosses her legs and holds her cold glass of lemonade up against her neck to fight off the heat of this unseasonably warm September.

“There’s a ton of kudzu behind your house,” she says to Eddie.

“Yeah. Sometimes I have dreams that it grabs our house and smushes it.”

“Like the vines in _Jumanji_ ,” Richie says.

Beverly laughs. “The vines in _Jumanji_! Wow, that would be really scary, huh?”

“My mom told me kudzu is an invasive species and one day it’s going to drive all the mountain people out elsewhere. I can’t imagine not living in the mountains.” Eddie sips his lemon water. He told Richie once that it doesn’t taste as good as regular lemonade, but it’s okay because it aids with digestion. Richie still doesn’t really get what that means or why any twelve-year-old would care about digestion, but Eddie is weird and Richie has learned to appreciate that about him.

“Hey, we should go play,” Beverly suggests. 

“I’ll bet the church’s playground is probably open since there was a service today,” Richie says. “Do you think your mom will let us go?” he asks Eddie. “It’s just across the bridge.”

Eddie gulps down the rest of his lemon water. “It won’t hurt to ask,” he says. He approaches his mother gently, with his best puppy dog eyes, and sweetly holds her hand. They have a tense conversation that Richie and Beverly can’t quite hear, but Eddie returns to them victorious. “She said it’s okay as long as I don’t jump out of the swings like that one time.”

So the three of them make the short walk across the bridge and over to the brown brick Methodist church where Richie was just squirming away in a pew a few hours earlier. The gate to the playground is unlocked just as Richie had suspected. They decide to swing first.

“Eddie jumped out of a swing and cut his knees up real bad. His mom got so mad at him, but she somehow made it my fault,” Richie says.

“Your mom’s really protective of you, huh?” Beverly asks. “My parents kind of just let me do whatever I want most days…” She trails off.

“She’s a maniac,” Richie says, and at the same time Eddie says, “She’s just trying to take care of me.”

Eddie continues, “Ever since my dad died, she worries about me getting hurt. She just wants me to be healthy.”

“Your dad…?” Beverly is frowning and looks like she wants to say something but doesn’t quite know how.

“He died in the coal mines,” Eddie says.

Richie can’t place the expression that twists itself onto Beverly’s face. She opens her mouth and quickly clamps it shut. Finally, she says, “I’m really sorry to hear that, Eddie. My papaw died in the coal mines, too. That’s why I’m a union man.”

Richie figures that Beverly is probably a lot smarter than him on a lot of things, like whatever unions are. Eddie says he’s heard the word union before, but he still doesn’t really get what it means.

“It’s where the poor folk stick together so that millionaires don’t take advantage,” Beverly says. “People from up north came down here for the coal in the mountains and they paid miners in company credits, not even cash money, and treated them like they weren’t worth a damn thing. My mama grew up in a coal town. She told me all about it.”

“She grew up in the coal town where the landslide killed that old lady?” Richie asks. This is probably the coolest thing he’s ever heard. His parents included him in a grownup conversation about this once—they said that the coal mining companies don’t respect the mountains. They caused a landslide that picked up an entire town of houses and moved them off their foundations and an elderly woman died because she couldn’t get out of her home in time.

Beverly nods. “Yeah, my mama was there. She said it sounded like a freight train coming down the mountain. She would have died if she hadn’t ran out of her house before it hit. That’s why we have to stick together. The little people. Because if we don’t, anyone who thinks they’re bigger and stronger will step all over us. Solidarity forever.”

It sets Richie off thinking about Mike and Stan, what caused Stan’s insides the boil up that day he stood up to Patrick Hockstetter. The way Mike and Stan are brothers bound for life now. They look out for each other better than anyone else. He supposes that’s probably what solidarity means. So he will show solidarity with them as well.

“You should come to my house this weekend,” Richie says to Beverly. “We’re going to set up some tents in the backyard and sleep outside. It’ll be me, Eddie and the rest of our friends. Bill, Ben, Mike, and Stanley. You know them?”

“A little bit,” Beverly says, smiling. “I’d love to come over. I’ll ask my parents once we get home.” She takes a big leap out of the swing and lands on her feet without stumbling. Richie follows suit. Eddie slowly lets his swing come to a stop and carefully slides off, and they tease him for it, but just a little bit. Not enough to be mean.

It takes quite a bit of persuasion, but Beverly’s parents agree to let her camp out with the others. The only condition is that she must sleep in her own tent, alone, which is all well and good because the boys have already made their sleeping arrangements. Richie and Eddie in one, Bill and Ben beside them, and then Mike and Stan. 

Mr. Wentworth Tozier sets up a little fire pit for them so that they can roast hotdogs and make s’mores. He tells them he’ll be so very proud of them if they can all manage to sleep through the night without getting scared and having to wake him up to let them in the house, so they all promise that they will try their hardest.

Richie and Eddie are lying next to each other in the grass and there’s a rare moment of silence between them. That strikes Richie as odd, so he reaches over and pokes Eddie in the side, right where he knows Eddie is most ticklish. This causes Eddie to let out that shrieking type of laughter that embarrasses him so much. He rolls over and flings his leg over Richie, then sits upright on Richie’s stomach.

“ _Don’t_ tickle me,” he says.

Richie pokes at him again, this time on both sides, and Eddie laughs as he grabs Richie’s arms and holds them still. “Eds, I say, you’re just about the cutest little thing I ever did see,” Richie coos, putting on that old church lady voice he has to endure every Sunday as a line of old blue-haired biddies pinch his cheeks and ask him if he has a girlfriend.

“Do _not_ tickle me, do _not_ call me cute, and _do not call me Eds_ ,” Eddie growls, because he means it this time. He doesn’t take into account that Richie is a bit stronger than him, so he’s caught off guard when Richie wrangles his arms free from Eddie’s tiny hands and moves to sit up, sending Eddie to fall flat on his back. Both of them are laughing now.  
  
There is a shadow cast over them in the early dusky light of evening. “Are you stupid idiots done?” Stan asks, and he’s holding a book of birds native to the Southeastern United States at his side, because that’s the sort of thing Stan likes. “Beverly brought a Ouija board and we’re going to use it.”

Eddie sits up, supporting himself on his elbows. “Is that okay? Won’t we go to hell?”

“I thought you didn’t believe in that stuff,” Richie says, pulling errant blades of grass out of the fibers of his socks. On that same note, he’s not exactly sure his parents would be okay with him using a Ouija board, but whatever. What they don’t know won’t hurt them.

The sun is nearly completely set and the seven of them sit in a perfect circle beside the fire pit. Bill helped Richie get a fire going, but it’s so small that it doesn’t provide much light. Wentworth left the rear porch light on for them just in case they get scared and they each have a flashlight, so their faces are sparsely illuminated, shadows dancing over and about their features, serious as they are over the prospect of contacting someone from beyond the grave with Beverly’s Ouija board.

Mike bemoans the idea that he’s going to slip and accidentally tell his parents about using a Ouija board and Eddie gives a small nod in agreement. Even if the Kaspbraks aren’t particularly religious, he feels rather certain that his mother would be just as concerned for the state of his mortal soul as she is for the state of his physical body.

“I don’t really believe this stuff is real,” Stan huffs, “so it doesn’t bother me either way.”

Ben and Beverly sit in the camp of genuine curiosity and open-mindedness, Richie stews in his religious confusion, and they all look to Bill to see what he thinks.

“M-m-my mom told me sh-she used a Ouija b-b-board once and her d-dead g-g-grandmother told her t-to clean her r-r-room,” he says solemnly. The others, except for stone-faced Stan, look at him with their eyes nearly bugging out of their heads. “Sh-she asked me to n-n-never use o-one, but I d-don’t really c-c-care b-because what’s the h-harm in someone’s grandma s-saying something?”

Beverly places her fingers over the planchette. Richie, not wanting to be labeled a coward, quickly follows. Then Stan, Bill, Ben, Mike… the six of them look at Eddie.

“Okay fine,” he grumbles and makes room for his fingers between Richie and Bill’s.

“I’ll be the medium,” Beverly says. “We only want to have a positive experience tonight and we aren’t going to stand for any troublemaking, okay? Do you understand?” The planchette very slowly moves over the word YES.

“You all were moving it,” Stan says, to which everyone argues that no, they weren’t.

“What should I ask the spirit?”

“Ask if it lives in my house,” Richie says. Better to rip the bandage off fast and find out if his family has unknowingly been haunted this whole time. 

Beverly clears her throat. “Do you live in the Toziers’ house?” The planchette moves over the word NO. “Okay, then where do you live?”

The planchette moves at a glacial pace over the letters B-A-R-N. Eddie makes a strained noise deep in his throat. “The barn behind the cornfield,” he croaks, “the one where I saw a ghost!”

Stan lets out a long, pained groan. “For the last time, Eddie, you didn’t see a ghost! It was a little rat running through the hay—it’s an old barn no one uses, there’s rats all in it!” he says. They have this conversation every other week.

“Are you the ghost Eddie saw in the barn?” Beverly asks.

YES.

Everyone whips their heads around to look at Richie, as if he is any authority over the ghost that supposedly lives in the old barn behind his house. “What the fuck? I don’t know any ghosts! Eddie said he saw the ghost, not me!”

“What was Eddie doing when you showed yourself to him?”

The planchette moves. H-I-D-E-A-N-D-S-E-E-K.

“I’m done!” Eddie chokes. “I’m done, I need my inhaler, I can’t breathe, I’m done, this isn’t okay, I can’t believe I let you guys convince me to do this, now this ghost is going to like attach itself to me and follow me home and I’m going to have to deal with this for the rest of my life!”

Beverly heaves a disgruntled sigh. “Do you want to stay in the barn?” she asks. The planchette moves over to YES.

“Ask if it the reason it showed itself is because it wanted to play,” Mike suggests, giving Eddie a sympathetic smile.

“Did you want to play hide and seek with Eddie?” YES. “See, Eddie, isn’t that nice? The ghost didn’t want to hurt you, it just wanted to play.”

Eddie makes a sound of indeterminate meaning.

“Does that mean the ghost is a little kid?” Ben asks.

“Good question. Are you a little kid?” YES.

“What’s your name?”

D…… O…… R……

“You all are moving it,” Stan hisses.

O…… T…… H…… Y

“Hello, Dorothy,” Beverly says pleasantly. “Thank you for speaking to us today. I’m going to end the conversation now.” She guides the planchette over the word GOODBYE. “Okay, was that really so bad?”

Eddie pulls his fingers from the planchette like it’s burned him and grabs his inhaler out of his fanny pack, taking not one, not two, but three frantic puffs. “I knew it, Stan told me that it wasn’t a ghost, but I knew it was a ghost.”

“It wasn’t a ghost! It was a rat!” Stan insists, clapping his hands together with every syllable. This ignites a fierce argument between the two of them. Beverly laughs and laughs as she packs the Ouija board back into her overnight bag.

“I’ll bet we could find some old records in the library to see if someone named Dorothy lived on this property,” Mike says thoughtfully.

“That,” Ben says, vibrating with excitement, “is the best idea ever, Mikey! I love the library! Let’s do that next week!”

“Holy shit, did I really invite a bunch of fucking pussies and nerds to spend the night with me,” Richie grouses, and he crawls over towards the fire to fumble his hand around on the ground for a chocolate bar. He glances over his shoulder and sees that while Eddie has one hand gesticulating wildly in Stan’s face, the other is stretched out behind him holding hands with Bill, who is watching the ensuing argument with a soft, placid smile. “Gross,” he grumbles.

“What is?” Beverly ask, and Richie screams, startled by her sudden presence. “Sorry, I’ve been told I have a quiet step,” she giggles, sitting down beside him. She looks over in the direction of the others and then back at Richie. “Is something wrong?”

Richie makes a noise like “huh-uh” and rips open the chocolate bar. He breaks off two squares, one for him and one for Beverly.

“Well, you’re acting like something is wrong. Did you get scared?” Beverly accepts the square of chocolate and eats it in one bite.

“No, I don’t even know if I believe in stuff like that,” Richie says briskly. There’s something inviting about Beverly, something about her makes Richie feel like he could tell her anything in the world without judgment. If only he knew exactly what it is he wanted to tell her in the first place.

“It’s okay if you’re not ready to talk about it. But just know that I’m here whenever you are,” Beverly says. She nudges him with her elbow.

“Thank you, Bev,” Richie says quietly. “You’re a pretty cool guy, you know that?” He breaks off another square of chocolate for her.

“You’re not so bad yourself, Tozier,” she says, and they sit together by the fire in a comfortable sort of silence.

As the night goes on, after playing and joking and telling ghost stories, Beverly is the first to say that she isn’t tired and the first to fall asleep. She dozes off with her legs sticking out of her tent while listening to The Cranberries on her Walkman. Ben carefully and respectfully takes her blanket out of her overnight bag and drapes it over her. “So-so she, uh… doesn’t catch a cold,” he stammers when he notices the others looking at him with a variety of curious expressions.

He’s the second to go, followed by Stan who has never been a fan of staying up late, even on the weekends. They all tease him and say he’s just like an old man. Eddie decides that he’s ready for bed soon after, but Richie wants to stay up a little longer. Bill and Mike are catching lightning bugs in a jar and then letting them go and Richie finds something comforting in the serene energy between the two of them, the way that Bill reverently watches as lightning bugs crawl over Mike’s fingers.

“Th-they love you,” Bill says softly. They bring their faces close together, cheek to cheek and whisper back and forth, awestruck every time one of the bugs lights up. Richie feels like he is witnessing something private, something he isn’t meant to see, so he decides to join Eddie in their tent.

He unzips his sleeping bag slowly as to not wake Eddie, but his efforts are futile. Eddie’s eyes flutter open and he gives Richie a sleepy smile.

“Sorry,” Richie whispers, climbing into his sleeping bag.

“Is everyone else asleep?” Eddie asks.

“No, Bill and Mikey are still up. They’re catching lightning bugs.”

“Hmmm.” Eddie burrows further down into his sleeping bag. “I really did see a ghost in the barn that day, you know,” he says.

“I know.”

One of Eddie’s arms surfaces at the opening of the sleeping bag and he reaches out towards Richie. “I’m still kind of scared… so hold my hand while I fall asleep. And if you tell anyone I’ll kick your fucking ass.”

Richie obliges, taking Eddie’s hand and giving it a comforting squeeze. “Sure thing, Eds. Goodnight.”

“Don’t call me Eds,” Eddie yawns, and then he’s asleep again.

**+**

The seven of them wake up with the sunrise, unzipping their tents and stepping out onto the dewy grass barefoot. There are morning glories in bloom all around them, the sky is an infinite palette of orange and pink. Their voices are rough and their eyes are heavy. They say very little in their peaceful morning prayer.


	2. fourteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warning: homophobic slurs, snakes, referenced child death (georgie), referenced traumatic injury (eddie's arm), THE EXPLICIT DISCUSSION OF A FAMILY MEMBER COMMITTING SUICIDE.

“I have no idea how I let you convince me to do these things, it’s freezing cold and I’m probably going to get pneu _monia_ ,” Eddie says, each angry word crystallizing in the frigid air. It’s late October and Richie somehow managed to persuade Eddie to attend one of Ben’s football games—or rather, he persuaded Eddie’s mom to _allow_ Eddie to attend one of Ben’s football games. She wasn’t happy, and she still hates Richie’s guts, but she conceded. They’re supposed to meet up with the others, too, but so far it’s just Richie and Eddie. Richieandeddie. The way it always is. Richie likes being with everyone, but he also like it when it’s just him and Eddie.

He takes a drag off his cigarette, which further infuriates Eddie.

“I hate how much you’re smoking lately. It’s bad enough that Beverly smokes all the time, but now you smoke all the time, too, and you guys smoke even more when you’re together. Haven’t you seen the pictures of those shriveled up lungs on TV? That’s what’s going to happen to you.”

“Eds,” Richie says, “I’m fine.”

“Whatever,” Eddie huffs, and he crosses his arms. “And that’s not my name.”

Soon, Bill and Mike join them. They’ve been spending a lot of time together as well, becoming something like Billandmike. Bill’s nose is all red from the cold and Mike offers him his scarf to wrap around his face and it’s so sweet Richie might just throw up everywhere.

“Stan got caught up with Patty at the concessions stand,” Mike says, rubbing his hands together. He sits down beside Eddie and they scoot close together for warmth.

The Losers’ hangout spot for football games is under the far end of the bleachers on account of it’s easier for Richie and Beverly to get away with smoking down there. It doesn’t give them the best view of the field, but that’s fine because they can see enough to know when they’re supposed to cheer.

Beverly is nowhere to be found, which strikes them all as pretty strange. It isn’t like her. They toss around weak attempts at awkward conversation, all of them distracted by the lack of Beverly’s laugh and infectious warmth. Even Stan makes an appearance eventually, cheeks all flushed from both the cold and talking to pretty Patty Blum.

“Where’s Bev?” he asks, and the others shrug. “Weird,” he says under his breath.

The atmosphere takes another blow when Bill finds his mood deflating, which often happens in random intervals since the death of his little brother the previous year. They can always tell when it happens because his shoulders get this distinctive tension about them, like puppet strings pulling them up into this defensive hunched over posture that wants to keep everyone out when he needs them the most.

After Georgie’s funeral, Richie’s parents sat down with him at the kitchen table and told him that things were going to be different from now on, that Bill was still the same Bill as before but with a permanent change in his heart, and it may make him a bit complicated from time to time. It’s called grief, is what they told Richie.

They had all learned about the physical and emotional changes of the adolescent mind and body in health class at school, but Richie had never heard of _grief_ before. The way his parents described it, it kind of sounded like walking around with a bunch of heavy rocks in your pockets. You can still walk, but it’s cumbersome. It’s exhausting.

The previous year hadn’t been particularly kind to Eddie either. Not soon after Georgie’s funeral, the first day they managed to coax Bill out of his room and out into the light of day, Eddie miscalculated his footing on a branch of the magnolia tree outside of Richie’s house—he fell and broke his arm with a sickening crunch.

This caused a meltdown in the Kaspbrak household, as Sonia was now certain in her conviction to never let Eddie leave their home. She had him placed on homebound schooling and he wasn’t allowed to see his friends for several weeks. The stress of losing a sibling and then witnessing the bone in Eddie’s arm splitting in two moved Bill’s parents to set him up with a child psychologist.

Every few days, Richie’s parents would insist that they have a _talk_ about Richie’s mental health and stress management. It made him feel uncomfortable, but they told him he would understand when he was older. And then he asked why they were always saying that—were they just giving up on trying to talk to him like a grownup about grownup concepts? It was the first big, explosive fight he ever had with his parents. He regretted it as soon as it started, but he couldn’t stop screaming. And he cried. He cried for Georgie, he cried for Bill, he cried for Eddie, and he cried for the memory of the peaceful existence he and his friends would never get back.

“Permanence is difficult to understand when you’re young,” Maggie had said. Richie didn’t have any fight left in him. He wanted to understand everything _now_. But he couldn’t. So he just calmed himself down and listened intently to everything his parents told him.

Things are a little better nowadays. Eddie’s arm hurts when it rains. Bill’s heart hurts in fits and starts—Richie understands a little more every day. Rocks in a coat pocket. A phantom signal of pain shooting through a mended bone. That’s life.

Richie sits down next to Bill and leans into him. “What’s going on in that head of yours, Big Bill?” he asks.

Bill gives him a bashful smile—his Beverly smile. “J-j-just thinking. Y-y-y-you know.”

“We were thinking of going to the dance after the game, what do you say? I’ll bet Beverly will be saving you a dance.”

“You th-think?” Bill takes Mike’s scarf and circles it around his face to conceal the blush forming over his cheeks.

“Fuck yeah, dude, she’s so into you!” Richie can’t help but feel a little guilty, because he knows that Ben is sweet on Beverly and picking sides in a love triangle consisting of three of his closest friends doesn’t feel right. But Beverly is undeniably sweet on Bill and if Richie can nudge Bill in the right direction, then he’s going to.

“I h-h-hadn’t n-noticed,” Bill says. “I’m k-kind of w-w-worried that she i-isn’t here.”

“Yeah… Me too, kind of. We’ll check in at the dance and if she’s not there then we can ride our bikes to her house, how about that?” Richie suggests.

“Sh-she lives b-b-back in the h-holler.”

Beverly’s house has unfinished wood siding and is built up on stilts way back in what is known to mountain folk as a _holler_ , because it’s a _hollered_ -out valley nestled deep in the mountains. They don’t even get city water back there, Eddie said once, they drink it straight from a _well_. It’s a pretty treacherous bike ride, but Richie has managed to make it a few times, to the disdain of Mr. Marsh, who thinks Richie is _funny_. Not funny, but _funny_.

“Yeah, it’s not so bad, though,” Richie assures him.

Something good happens on the field, so everyone starts cheering. But the home team is still losing, which they usually do. It’s okay, though, because the Losers gather to support Ben, not necessarily because they are overflowing with school spirit.

The game ends and still Beverly is nowhere to be found, so the five of them agree to head to the gymnasium, convene with Ben after he changes back into his regular clothes, and see if Beverly is there. The post-game dances are rather unceremonious, just some top 40s playing and dimmed lights. The bleachers are pushed back, so those who don’t feel like dancing have a corner to sulk in.

Relief sweeps over Richie when he sees Beverly sitting in the corner by the rear gymnasium exit, door propped open so she can smoke. She waves them all over, but she doesn’t seem like her regular self.

“What’s up?” Richie asks, crouching down beside her. She offers him a drag off of her cigarette. He is happy to partake, having extinguished his on the way up from the football field.

“We missed you at the game,” Eddie says. Normally he would hug her, but he hates to when she’s been smoking, so they just make grabby hands at each other.

“Richie a-a-and I w-w-were going t-to ride our b-bikes back in the th-th holler t-to f-f-find you,” Bill says, with that same bashful smile he had given Richie back at the game.

“You guys are sweet. My parents have just been acting so weird lately, I couldn’t get out of the house in time for the game. I still wanted to see everyone, so…” She trails off, clearly not wanting to elaborate, so they decide to respect her wishes. “I didn’t mean to worry you. I see Stan is over there talking to Patty, but where’s Mike and Ben?”

“Mike is waiting for Ben over at the entrance, gentleman that he is,” Richie says, throwing a thumb over his shoulder. “Pretty bad game. You didn’t miss much.”

Beverly giggles. “I figured, but I like to show up for Ben. You know he doesn’t care about winnin’ or losin’, he’s just happy to be a part of something. Wish I could have made it in time.” The music turns to a sappy R&B ballad and Beverly points at something over their heads. “Look, but don’t make it obvious,” she says.

It’s Stan, slow dancing with Patty Blum. They’re swaying back and forth, foreheads pressed together, talking and smiling. Patty is wearing a houndstooth print dress with black stockings and a knitted beret. She always looks so prim and put together, exactly Stan’s type.

“Fuck yeah, Stan the Man,” Richie says, genuinely impressed.

Beverly extinguishes her cigarette against the wall and throws the butt outside. “Bill, do you want to dance with me?” she asks, to which Bill stammers a nonsensical response that sounds something like a yes. He offers his hand to Beverly, helping her to her feet. They walk to the dance floor holding hands, just a few feet away from Stan and Patty.

“I knew Bill wasn’t gonna make the first move,” Richie says. “Stan owes me five bucks.”

“You guys have bets on our friends?” Eddie asks, looking distinctly disapproving. He’s starting to frown more the older he gets. Brow permanently furrowed. He always was a fussy one, Maggie said once. I love it because that’s what makes him Eddie, Richie told her. 

They’re sitting close together, Eddie with his legs pulled up close to his chest and Richie with his legs stretched out in front of him. It alleviates the growing pains. He’s taller than Big Bill now, he’s proud to announce to the world. There’s something Richie wants to say, but he can’t, and he won’t, and he wishes that Eddie would say it first. It would be nice if they could slow dance with each other.

“Dances aren’t very fun.” Eddie squirms around uncomfortably, his arm brushing up against Richie’s. The fabric of his overcoat gets staticky when it rubs against Richie’s old bomber jacket—his dad’s, from years and years ago.

“Nah, but it’s nice to see everyone,” Richie says.

“We see everyone every day. We’re just sweatier and grosser here.” He pauses. “Stan really likes Patty, huh?”

“He won’t shut the fuck up about her, but he’s too scared to ask her to go steady or whatever.” Richie risks a sideways glance at Eddie, who is rather unashamedly looking right at him. “You’ve got that look on your face, Eds, tell me what’s up.”

“Do you think it’s okay if I… never want to go steady with anyone?”

Richie wants to ask, _with anyone? Like literally anyone? Not even with me_? _Can we go steady? Is that a thing we can do together? I don’t know._ There’s a painful lump forming in his throat and he can feel the tips of his ears turning red. “I think that’s fine,” he says as coolly as he can manage. “But why don’t you?”

“I don’t know. But I’m scared that everyone’s going to leave me behind.” Eddie wiggles out of his overcoat and folds it up in his lap. A small glimpse of his collarbone under his shirt. Richie is starting to notice things like that.

“No one’s leaving anyone behind. I don’t really want to go steady with anyone, either,” Richie says, and that’s pretty much the truth. He doesn’t really know what it means that the only person he wants to spend all of his time with is Eddie, even though they’re both boys, but if they can’t go steady together then Richie would rather not go steady with anyone at all.

Since Richie started getting taller and growing into his looks, girls have shown quite a bit of interest in him. Eddie isn’t doing so badly himself—quiet, good-natured church girls are always drawn to him because he seems like such a goody-goody before he opens his mouth and starts screaming like a crazy person about botulism and listeria and whatever the fuck.

Usually Richie will pass notes with a girl, and then they’ll talk on the phone for a few days, and then he’ll hit this wall. He doesn’t really want to hold hands. Hugs make him feel weird. He goes through the motions for a while. Maybe they’ll go get milkshakes at the Dairy Hut. But it never goes anywhere. Maggie said it’s okay, because he’s just fourteen and fourteen-year-olds don’t need to worry too much about dating.

“But it isn’t right to string girls along,” she said. He wanted to scream, _I’m not doing that! I don’t even know what I’m doing_! But he just said okay.

Then Eddie decides to ask a question that knocks Richie on his proverbial ass. “Have you kissed anyone?”

“No!” Richie says with such frantic urgency that Eddie looks taken aback. “No, I haven’t. I haven’t met anyone that I want to kiss yet. Any girls. That I want to kiss. Besides, I’m saving myself for your mom. None of these middle school broads are mature enough for me, Eds.”

“Shut the fuck up! Fuck you!” Eddie blusters, giving Richie a weak-willed shove. “Fucking disgusting. Anyway… Me either.” He drops his gaze to the floor. 

Richie wants to say, _remember the other day when we were lying on my bed playing Pokémon and the wind was blowing so hard outside we could hear the wind chime on the front porch and my mom was baking cornbread so the whole house smelled all warm and honey-like? I wanted to kiss you so bad then, because it just felt right. I was happy, I was warm, I was safe, and you were next to me. So I wanted to kiss you. I want to share my first kiss with you._

Instead he says, “I wonder where Mike and Ben are,” and Eddie shrugs.

The two of them decide to step outside for some fresh air. Eddie puts his overcoat back on and complains about the cold. They run into Mike and Ben right outside the front entrance of the school, sitting on the concrete steps.

“We were missing you guys,” Richie says, sitting down next to Ben. Eddie follows, sitting one step down at Mike’s feet. “Beverly’s inside.”

“Hey guys,” Ben says, and he has this scrunched up look on his face and then Richie realizes. There’s that awful, twisted up guilty feeling again in his gut, even though Richie technically didn’t do anything wrong in this situation. Beverly was the one who asked Bill to dance. And it’s shitty in itself that Richie is so quick to try and absolve himself of any guilt, like he doesn’t want to be burdened by Ben’s hurt feelings.

“He just needs a minute,” Mike says gently, rhythmically rubbing circles on Ben’s back. Mike is caring like that. When Richie met Mike’s mom for the first time, he immediately understood. Her voice is smooth and sweet. She always knows the right words to say. She’s an angel on earth and her blood is running through Mike’s veins. 

No one says anything for a while. It’s a heavy but companionable silence. Eddie leans his head on Ben’s shoulder to cloak him even more in the endless love of his friends. But no one can really think of much to say. Beverly and Bill soon join them, but Stan stays inside.

“He’s supposed to come stay the night at my house but I’m gonna leave his ass here if he can’t stop mackin’ on Patty Blum,” Richie grumbles. It isn’t really jealousy. Except maybe it kind of is.

Ben puts on a happy face the second Beverly squeezes between him and Richie on the steps. “Sorry I missed the game, Ben. Weird stuff happened with my parents… I’ll tell you guys all about it soon enough. Glad to see you, though!”

“Yeah,” Ben says, “I’m glad to see you, too.” And he smiles like he means it. He must mean it. It would be a cold day in hell before Ben Hanscom wasn’t happy to be in the company of Beverly Marsh, even when enduring his first big adolescent heartbreak at a middle school dance.

Ben is a good guy. That’s what Richie thinks about Ben. But then his insides get that guilty feeling again. There’s an agenda here and he’s too ashamed to admit it, even to himself. He’ll have to tell someone eventually, or he’s going to explode.

He decides rather abruptly that he wants to go home, which surprises the others. Just as he is pulling Beverly into an awkwardly angled hug, Stan decides to grace them with his presence and is happy to leave as well, because his work at the dance is done—his work being securing a slow dance with Patty. They all wish each other goodnight and go their separate ways, with Richie and Stan heading off in the direction of Richie’s house.

It’s a quick walk back home from the school. His parents asked him to please stick to the railroad tracks just to make sure they don’t get lost, even though it would be nearly impossible to get lost in a town as small as this and he’s made this same short journey hundreds of times over the course of his fourteen years.

“Is Patty your girlfriend now?” Richie asks, balancing on the thin metal of the track. He’s gotten pretty good at this. Once Mike was trying to balance the way Richie does and he instantly fell, landing in the middle of the track and scratching up his knees and elbows. Eddie started screaming at the top of his lungs that a train was going to run him over and he pulled Mike to his feet with some freakish Herculean strength and everyone laughed so hard that they all ended up falling down on the tracks. Eddie was really sore about that, because getting run over by a train was no laughing matter. 

“No, but maybe soon,” Stan says, like it’s no big deal. “We’re still talking about it.”

“Awesome. She’s really… pretty,” Richie says carefully, noting the stern look Stan is giving him out of the corner of his eye. “You guys looked like you were having a great time at the dance.”

“I always have a great time when I’m with her. She’s a lovely girl,” Stan says. It’s so fucked up, Richie thinks, how Stan always sounds older than he is. Like he’s someone’s dad or something. Like he’s all ready for marriage and a job and kids. “Is there any particular reason you wanted to head out so early?”

Richie makes a noncommittal noise. “It was getting kind of awkward with Archie, Betty and Veronica,” he says. It comes out sounding a lot more evasive than he meant it to, and Stan catches on immediately. Stan is always the first to notice anything and everything. Especially when it comes to Richie.

The porch light is still on for them when they reach Richie’s house. Greeting his parents gives him the necessary time he needs to think of what he wants to say to Stan. And to remind himself that if there’s anyone he can talk to about anything, it’s Stan, and that everything is going to be fine no matter what. Stan will see to it.

Stan does the polite kid thing and has a genial conversation with Maggie and Wentworth. They think Stan is the finest, most stand-up boy they’ve ever met. They ask him about his grades and if Richie has been sitting still in class ever since he started on the Adderall. Stan always talks Richie up a bunch when he’s talking to ol’ Mags and Wents, for which Richie is eternally grateful. Because sometimes he doesn’t really deserve it, but Stan always delivers.

They go upstairs to Richie’s room which is not adequately tidied up to Stan’s exceptionally high standards, so he starts being a fuddy-duddy and throwing dirty laundry in the hamper. That’s just the kind of person he is. “Talk to me, Richie,” he says.

Richie pretends like he can’t hear him, focusing on his new six-disc CD player that his parents got him because he made all B’s on his last report card. Then his dad took him to an old music store in the city and taught him about this kind of music called new wave and these bands called New Order, and Joy Division, and The Cure. He let Richie pick out six CDs and they spent the afternoon listening to music together.

He decides to just turn on the radio. “I don’t want you to think I’m weird,” he says.

“I already think you’re weird. There’s nothing you could possibly tell me that will make me think you’re any weirder than I already do,” Stan says. He pulls the bottom of his neatly tucked-in polo shirt out, which means he’s really letting loose. Then he sits down on Richie’s bed, now clear of all discarded laundry.

“I think I’m doing something selfish,” Richie says, “but I don’t know how to stop it.”

“Elaborate.”

Richie sits down on the bed to face Stan, because Stan values direct eye contact and good interpersonal skills. Once he told Richie that he had a weak handshake and Richie still isn’t over that level of hurt. “I’ve been pushing Bill and Beverly together. Because…”

Stan raises his eyebrows. “Because…?”

“I get jealous… that Eddie is always trailing after Bill. So I thought that if Bill was preoccupied with Beverly, then maybe…”

“Okay,” Stan says neutrally. “I see.”

Richie twiddles his thumbs together nervously.

“Richie, it’s okay. It’s…” Stan pauses, gathering his words carefully. “I don’t know what else to say other than that it’s okay.”

“I think there’s something wrong with me. I think I like Eddie. In the same way that you… like Patty.”

Stan nods. And then he leans forward and gives Richie a small, chaste peck on the lips. “If there’s something wrong with you, then there’s something wrong with me, too. And if there’s something wrong with both of us, then we’ll be wrong together. But I don’t think it’s wrong, Richie.” He waits patiently for Richie to overcome his rare moment of speechlessness.

“You’re really the best, Stan,” is all Richie can manage. And then the tears start pouring. “You’re the best,” he cries, and Stan pulls him into a hug.

Next Monday at school, Henry Bowers unfortunately decides that Eddie is the flavor of the week. He and his goons work on a pretty consistent schedule—it was Richie, then Stan, then Mike. Usually Bill follows, but Bowers skipped ahead to Eddie for reasons unknown. 

When Henry Bowers shoves Eddie up against his locker and punches merely centimetres away from his head to intimidate him, no one is particularly concerned, not even Eddie. That’s his usual modus operandi. However, Henry then tells Eddie that he’d better run for his fucking life as soon as the final bell rings, because otherwise, he’s dead. So now they’re a little concerned.

“W-w-we can just run st-straight through the R-R-RV park and c-cut over to Richie’s,” Bill suggests later in homeroom.

“Bowers knows that’s the fastest way. I say head south to the funeral home,” Beverly says.

“That’s a good idea. I’ve hidden from Bowers in the funeral home plenty of times before,” Richie says.

Eddie’s face is a sickly sort of pale and he has that look like someone who’s about to barf on a roller coaster. “I can’t fight anymore, I can’t run anymore,” he laments like a world-weary veteran of war.

“Don’t worry. We got you,” Beverly says, squeezing his arm. “We’ll just run as fast as we can. You run faster than anyone I know, Eddie, just put that to good use.”

“What about tomorrow?” Eddie asks. “And the day after? Getting shoved into my locker at school is one thing, but he isn’t going to rest until I’m dead!”

Beverly and Bill share concerned glances. “It’s o-o-okay, Eddie, n-no matter what h-h-happens, we’ll b-be there for y-you. Just like y-y-you are a-always here for u-u-us.” Richie nods in agreement.

The rest of the day passes by achingly slow. Ben and his football buddies agree that they will try to intercept as many of Henry’s goons as they possibly can. Beverly has her final class with Stan and Mike—the situation being that they should probably _also_ run for their fucking lives when the bell rings after school for their own safety. Nothing’s ever stopped Bowers and company from dolling out some collateral damage, and Stan and Mike are particular favorites of his.

When the bell finally does ring, Eddie is out of the school in record time. Running isn’t an issue for him. He’s always been good at running. Their gym teacher even told him he should think about trying out for the track team once he’s in high school and it made him happy to be considered for something like that, even if his mom thinks he’s too fragile. If he isn’t allowed to run for fun, or for sport, he is going to run for his life. So he runs, and he runs, and he runs. He thinks he can hear people yelling at him, but he isn’t going to risk stopping for anything.

Beverly catches up with him, panting but keeping an impressive pace. Two streets down and across the railroad track is where the funeral home sits. One street down and they see Patrick Hockstetter in the distance. He must have been waiting like a sentry. The two of them continue running—second street down. Patrick is gangly and awkward and looks like a wounded horse when he runs, so Eddie isn’t worried about him.

Eddie’s endurance finally gives out once they reach the railroad tracks and he holds his arm out to stop Beverly. “Where is everyone else?” he asks, taking a deep gasping breath between every word.

“I dunno,” Beverly heaves. “Eddie, I think we need to go, like, now.”

He doesn’t really have it in him anymore, but he manages to jog at a reasonable pace around to the rear of the funeral home. It’s a white brick building that Eddie has been in exactly one time, when his father died. He remembers the funeral director being a very nice man, but he looked so troubled during the funeral that it had Eddie convinced something was wrong with his dad’s body. His mom told him he was not to look at the body, anyway, which only confirmed his fears.

“Do you think we’re safe?” Eddie opens his fanny pack and pulls out his inhaler. Not even that is able to help him catch his breath the way he needs.

“I don’t know,” Beverly says, leaning against the side of the building. The sound of footsteps approaching puts them on immediate alert, but it’s only Richie and Bill.

“W-w-w-we gotta g-get outta here,” Bill pants. “H-H-H—f-fuck, Richie, y-you say it.”

“Hockstetter told Bowers that you’re in town, so we just need to. I don’t know. Get the fuck out of here. But I don’t know which way we should go. But we need to decide fast,” Richie says.

“We’ll just run through the cemetery, it leads right to the park,” Eddie says. “Once we hit the park, we’re fine. Richie’s parents can literally hear us from there, so they can call 911 when I’m dying.” It’s the best they’ve got, so they creep around to the front of the funeral where home, where they are quickly intercepted by Henry Bowers.

“Oh goddammit,” Eddie whines, immediately throwing his arms in front of his face defensively. 

“Come on, Bowers, do we really have to do this today?” Richie asks. Bowers responds by pressing the palm of his hand against Richie’s face and shoving him back into Bill.

“Anyway... good on ya, girly boy! That was a pretty good escape plan,” Bowers says, grabbing Eddie by the collar of the shirt and lifting him off of the ground. Beverly grabs his arm and he flings her off with little effort. “Bitch, I’m not going to juvie over you. Now leave me alone, I have something important to tell Kaspbrak before I knock his teeth out.”

At this point, Hockstetter gallops up. “Made it just in time for the show,” he says, face pulled back in a hideous demon-like grin. He pulls Richie under one arm and Bill under the other, squeezing around their necks just enough for it to be uncomfortable. “Just wanna make sure you fags stay here, he has something important to tell your little fairy friend.”

Richie tries his hardest to squirm out of Hockstetter’s grasp, but it’s useless. Bill is equally immobilized, while Beverly stands close beside them and pleads with Bowers to just drop it and let everyone go home. She normally doesn’t show this level of desperation in the face of violent school bullies, but something is different today. Something isn’t sitting with any of them beyond the normal fear of getting a bloody nose. 

“So, Kaspbrak, tell me how it is your dad died again?” Bowers asks, with a performative, ingratiating politeness to his tone.

“He died… in the coal mines,” Eddie wheezes, panic-stricken and desperately kicking his feet around in the hopes that Bowers will drop him back to the ground. No such luck. Still small for his age, he’s easy to restrain.

Bowers makes a sound like a game show buzzer. “Nope! Guess again!” He lifts Eddie up higher and holds him at eye level. Eddie shakes his head, defeated in every sense of the word. “I just found out from _my_ dad… that _your_ dad hated you and your fatass mom _so much_ , that he went to the Tabernacle Church of God and drank _strychnine_ to get away from you!” he sneers, followed by a sickening laugh.

At this, Hockstetter lets Richie and Bill go and steps back to enjoy the chaos. Richie’s never been much of a fighter, but he runs over to Bowers with his fists swinging like a madman. He doesn’t stand much of a chance and one punch to the nose has him seeing stars. Beverly holds her arms out to catch him, and she’s screaming something at the top of her lungs, but there’s too much going on for it to make any sense.

Bill grabs shell-shocked Eddie and pulls him with all his might away from Bowers, which mostly just does a great job at pissing Bowers off. He grabs both Bill and Eddie by the collars of their shirts and smacks their heads together like they’re in a slapstick comedy group.

“Goddamn, y’all are squirmy today,” Bowers says, grabbing Eddie by the arm and drawing back his fist to make good on his promise to knock out some teeth.

The funeral home director has sensed the madness outside of his respected business and he runs outside with a broom like an old lady trying to _shoo_ a mouse out of her kitchen. Bowers and Hockstetter peel out together, looking rather pleased with themselves all the while. “Go on, get!” he screams. “Get on out of here before I tell your mamas!”

Not caring who was in the right and who was in the wrong, the director gives a harsh warning that if there is any more mischief then the police will be called immediately. The four Losers are sent on their way as well after offering the best apologies they can muster considering the current circumstances. They head off in the direction of the cemetery like they had originally planned. Only this time they are walking a funeral procession’s pace.

Beverly is the first to speak. “Eddie… it’s… I’m sorry. My parents, they…” She stops herself.

“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” Eddie snaps. “My dad has been dead for years. I don’t even remember him. Who cares?” But they all know that isn’t the point.

“Eddie…” Richie places a tentative, hesitant hand on Eddie’s shoulder. Eddie doesn’t shake him off, but he doesn’t say anything in return.

Bill takes Eddie’s hand in his. Eddie reaches over for Beverly with his free hand and Beverly completes the chain by grabbing hold of Richie. They walk through the cemetery in silence out of respect for the dead, careful not to step on any of the poorly maintained gravestones that are obscured by overgrown grass. Eddie’s father is somewhere in here, but he’s never been permitted to visit him before.

When they reach Richie’s house, they are surprised to see that Ben, Mike, and Stan are waiting for them on the front porch, Mike nervously pacing back and forth as Ben and Stan rock gently on the porch swing.

“We just wanted to make sure everything was okay,” Mike says. “We ran here straight through the RV park.”

“What happened?” Stan asks nervously, and Richie shakes his head.

They go inside in a single file line and sit down around the living room—cross-legged in the reading chairs, huddled close together on the floor, sometimes it feels like the living room of the Tozier house was made for the sole purpose of fitting them all to perfection. Richie goes to fetch his mother from the kitchen. “Mom,” he says. “We have a situation.”

“Richie, what—” Maggie balks when she turns to face her son and sees his bloody nose and the bruise dusting his cheekbone. She unties her apron and sets it on the kitchen table. She’s apprehensive as she approaches the group of mournful fourteen-year-olds scattered solemnly about her living room, and suddenly possesses a reserved air about her that Richie has rarely seen from his bold, confident mother. “Can someone please tell me what’s going on?”

They turn their heads to look at Eddie. His face is buried in his hands, but he isn’t crying. He looks up at her and he says, “I want you to tell me about my dad.”

“Oh… sweetheart, I don’t think—”

“Please tell me, Ms. Maggie. My mom is never going to tell me. She was going to lie to me for the rest of my life, and I have to know,” Eddie says. His lower lip is trembling. Beverly rests her head on his shoulder and closes her eyes.

“And you’re okay with… all of your friends knowing?”

He nods.

Maggie sighs. She nervously messes with her ponytail, covering her hair in the loose flour left on her hands when Richie called for her. She sits down on the couch at Eddie’s left and places her hands over his. “This is going to be difficult and I’m sorry. Your father… got wrapped up in a church where the congregation…” She pauses. “It was a snake handling church. Do you know what that is?”

Stan, Mike, and Ben share anxious, uncomfortable glances with each other. They are all thinking back to that morbid fascination they had snake handling when it was a new, secret concept they had just discovered. Something they felt only they knew about. It was close, yet far away enough to not be scary. And now here it is, growing among them like kudzu on the mountains.

“Kind of,” Eddie tells her.

“There’s a Bible verse that some people interpret as a call to hold snakes and drink poison. That’s what… Eddie, that’s what your daddy did. He drank strychnine and he… It killed him, Eddie. I’m sorry that I’ve been going along with your mother’s lie for all these years,” Maggie says, her deep shame apparent in her voice. “I suppose it’s fair to say this entire community has done you wrong, because most people know. And there’s no excuse for that.”

When no one moves to say anything, Maggie continues: “It was at the Tabernacle Church of God, back in the holler on the north end of town. The church ended up closing down shortly after, but it’s still standing.” She lowers her voice to a whisper. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. But we’re here for you. Look at all the people who love you.”

Richie, sitting at Eddie’s feet, wraps Eddie’s legs up in a tight hug. “Yeah, Eddie Spaghetti, I love you so much you’re gonna get sick of me one day!” he says. His voice is unsteady because he wants to cry. But he’s holding it in as best he can.

“Me too.” Beverly nuzzles her face against Eddie’s shoulder. The others create a tender congregation around him, ruffling his hair and giving him desperate, unbalanced hugs.

Maggie knows well when it’s time for her to allow them to sort out their feelings together, so she takes her leave back to the kitchen and pulls the cornbread out of the oven. It’s her great-grandmother’s recipe. The Toziers like it sweet, not savory. When the kids are finished tending to one another, she calls them into the kitchen for carefully cut pieces of the fresh cornbread sliced in half for a spread of butter. The sweet tea she made earlier is finally cold enough to serve.

Richie shows off his black eye and makes himself sound a lot more heroic than he was when he recounts the punch to Stan, Mike, and Ben, who humor him by pretending to believe that he managed to get a couple of hits in himself. Soon, they’re all laughing the way they’re meant to be, no time to think about snakes and strychnine. Though Eddie knows he will have to carry the burden of the truth home with him in silence, he can lay it to rest for just a moment.

There’s a fishing hole on the Hanlon farm. It’s quite a walk to the rear of the property, but the privacy in the beautiful, untouched woodland makes it worth it, as well as they don’t have to worry about things like fishing licenses. The mouth of the fishing hole opens into a cold stream that forks and runs further than the eye can see. Mike’s parents warn them that if they fall in, they’ll likely die.

Mrs. Jessica Hanlon packs a basket full of sandwiches, seven pieces of pound cake, and tells them to be careful with the pitcher of sweet tea she’s sending along with them. They decide Stan should carry it since he’s the most careful of them all. There are seven small plastic mugs packed in their picnic basket, olive green, orange, and yellow. Fall colors to match the season. Richie’s grandmother kept the same type of mugs at her house when she was still alive, and Wentworth brought them home after she died. They seemed inordinately important to him compared to the more valuable items in the house.

Mr. Will Hanlon gives them a big Styrofoam container of bait. There are four fishing rods, so they’ll have to take turns—if they decide they like fishing enough, he’ll go get more for them to keep on the farm. He teaches them how to bait their hooks and cast their lines. If they catch anything, they can bring it back in the cooler and they’ll grill it over the fire pit later, but they are not to be discouraged if they don’t catch much. There’s no use being discouraged. The process should be as fun as any result.

They all put on their coats and toboggans and walk through the pasture to the fishing hole.

“I don’t want to touch a worm,” Eddie says. “My mom will be real mad at me if I do it.”

“Why do you have to tell your mom?” Richie asks. He pinches a worm between his thumb and pointer finger and pierces it with a hook. Eddie gags.

“I don’t know, I’m afraid it’ll just slip out!”

Beverly takes a worm as well and baits her hook. “My dad used to take me fishing back when he was having a good spell.” A good spell is how Beverly refers to the times when her dad is not heavily drinking. There have not been many of these spells in her life.

Inspired by Beverly’s confidence, Ben baits a hook as well. “I’ve never grilled my own fish before,” he says. “I hope we manage to catch something.” He was a city boy before he and his mother moved here from the city on to a plot of family land only a few years prior, so he’s always trying new things with the Losers. He’s acclimated rather well to the rural life over the years.

Mike baits the fourth hook and casts it out. Richie, Beverly, and Ben follow suit. Stan, Bill, and Eddie watch with matching silent concentration, as if even a whisper will scare away any potential catches.

Beverly’s line is the first to tug down and she yanks the pole back with impressively quick reflexes, while the others cheer for her to reel it in. It’s just a tiny little thing, but they are nonetheless overjoyed. She grabs the line and observes her catch before tossing it into the cooler full of ice. Then she puts on a show of being modest as everyone congratulates her.

Their luck runs a bit dry after that, so they decide to take their lunch early. Stan pours tea into the mugs while Mike distributes sandwiches and the pieces of pound cake.

“Mama calls this her award-winning pound cake, but I’m not sure what type of award it’s won,” he says, pinching off a corner and popping it into his mouth. “I think that just means she knows it’s the best around.”

“Hey, Mikey,” Ben says. He’s on his back, arm over his eyes to block out the sun, taking small bites of his sandwich. “Do you think your dad would mind showing me some of his records?”

Will Hanlon is a coal town historian. That’s how Mike describes him. He has kept record of the county’s bloody coal mining history. Strikes, skirmishes, federal intervention, and murder. He built an additional room on to the rear side of the farmhouse, an office of sorts for him to read and compile his research. Ben has been itching to read everything he can get his hands on since the first time he visited the Hanlons.

“He won’t mind at all! He’s going to be so happy that someone’s interested. You’re just going to have to listen to him talk a lot,” Mike says. He puts on his best impersonation of his dad. “ _Son, there’s two things in these mountains. Blood, and coal. And I can tell you about both. Coal’s the lifeforce. And blood is price_. He has a whole speech.”

“I wonder if there’s anything about the landslide that took out my mama’s house,” Beverly says, mostly to herself. It’s something she thinks about a lot. The idea that her mom could have died as a young girl. And then Beverly herself would have never been born.

“There definitely is,” Mike says. “I knew about that before I even knew your mama lived in that coal town.”

“This place has such a dark history. It doesn’t feel real. Like it’s from a movie or something.” Ben finishes his sandwich and rolls over onto his side to reach for his piece of pound cake. “It’s so beautiful back here. There aren’t places like this in the city.”

“I love it.” Mike gets this starry-eyed look in his eyes when he talks about home. Not this county, not this town, but his family’s farm. A sanctuary. “But I want to see the world, too. I want to travel when I’m done with school. All over the world.”

“There’s all sorts of study abroad programs at the university across the way,” Richie tells him. “My mom and dad did one, that’s how they met. They lived in Portugal for a year.”

“That’s so romantic,” Mike sighs. Everyone else giggles—Mike is full of whimsical romanticism. With a heart far too big for this tiny mountain town. They cherish it about him.

Stan says unenthusiastically that his parents met doing trust falls at Jewish summer camp and they all laugh, because it is significantly less romantic than spending your first year with someone in a foreign country—learning a new language, trying new foods, experiencing a brand new world together. Mike thinks that’s still pretty romantic, though. Childhood sweethearts.

They decide to try fishing again, and Bill tries to encourage Eddie to take a turn. “Just g-g-grab a w-w-worm and p-put it on the hook,” he says. “Easy.”

Eddie makes a face like he’s smelling something rotten. He closes his eyes and pinches blindly into the container of bait. A small worm is procured. Bill holds the hook steady and Eddie holds the worm at an infinitesimal gap over the sharp point. “I’m going to throw up everywhere,” he whispers. “All over the place. Bacteria from the worm is going to get into a micro-cut on my hand that I don’t even know about. And I’m going to have to get my entire hand amputated.”

“W-w-well,” Bill says patiently, “y-you’re already h-h-holding the w-w-worm, so m-may as w-well b-bait it. We’ll w-w-worry about the a-a-amputation l-later.”

“Okaaaaay…” Eddie grimaces, and he pierces the worm down on the hook. Everyone cheers for him.

Bill reaches his arms around Eddie’s and grabs hold of the fishing rod over Eddie’s hand. “S-s-so, now w-we throw it b-b-back…” He pulls the rod back. “A-a-and then w-we c-cast it out. And n-n-now we wait.”

Beverly tries her hand again, sitting down beside Eddie at the edge of the water. However, when she notes something tugging at Eddie’s line, she gets so excited that she nearly drops her fishing rod in the water. Bill catches it just in time and feels a weight at the other end, so he reels the line in as Beverly cheers Eddie on to do the same. Two rather impressively sized fish emerge from the water and this sends everyone screaming like they’re watching a contact sport.

The fish are dropped into the ice and everyone stands over them, full of wide-eyed wonder, marveling at their newly discovered survival skills.

“Eddie, you’re a natural!” Beverly gushes. “Our good luck charm! Let’s go again,” she says, pulling Eddie back to the edge of the water.

“I have to touch a worm again,” Eddie says.

“Yeah, but it’s okay, because I’m going to do it, too,” Stan says, as he also has a significant distaste for creepy crawlies. As if he’s proving a point, he baits his hook quickly and casts the line with zero change in his expression. Eddie reluctantly does the same.

After catching two more fish, Eddie decides he’s had enough of touching worms, so he switches out with Mike and sits down beside Richie, who is now sitting cross-legged under the shade of a nearby apple tree and flipping through Stan’s bird book, picking at the crust of his sandwich.

“I saved half of my pound cake,” Eddie says, reaching into the pocket of his overcoat and revealing the treat carefully tucked into one of Jessica’s kitchen towels—it’s embroidered with little blue and purple flowers, which Eddie really likes. He asks, “Do you want a piece?”

Richie looks up just as Eddie is putting the cake in his mouth, holding it securely in the towel as to not touch it with his dirty wormy hands.

“Oh, sure,” he says.

Eddie tries to say something around the cake, something about how his hands are dirty so he doesn’t want to touch it. Holding the cake between his teeth, he leans over and offers a bite to Richie.

With the sound of his heart in pounding directly in his skull, Richie leans in and accepts the offering. Their lips brush just slightly, but Eddie doesn’t seem to notice or care—uncharacteristically so. When Eddie finishes his half of the piece, he gives Richie that dimpled smile of his.

“It’s… a good pound cake,” Richie says dumbly.

“Mrs. Hanlon is the best. Everything she makes tastes amazing. … And she’s really nice, too. I wish she was my mom.” It isn’t said with any malice towards his own mother. Just a bit of longing towards the life he could have had, perhaps.

“Did you… talk to your mom about what, uh, my mom told you the other day?” Richie asks, breeching the subject as delicately as his fourteen-year-old boy sensitivities will allow.

“Nope,” Eddie says lightly. “And I don’t feel like I’m going to, either. She’ll just tell me I’m wrong and it’ll be a whole thing. Where I start thinking maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about. Maybe she _is_ right. You know?”

Richie nods, but he doesn’t really know, because his parents are good to him. They don’t lie about anything beyond pretending like they didn’t remember what he wanted for his birthday until he comes home from school and it’s sitting on his bed.

“I was, uh, thinking,” Richie says, and he has to stop and collect himself when Eddie gives him that big-eyed, tilted-head look. That rare moment of calm and unassuming sweetness. “We could go… find your dad’s gravestone. If you want.”

“Oh,” Eddie says, a hint of surprise to his voice like he had never considered this to be something he could just _do_. “That would be nice. When I’m ready.”

The others are cheering over the acquisition of more fish and the evening chill sweeps over them. They figure it’s a good time to pack up their picnic basket and return to the farmhouse to show Will and Jessica the fruits of their labor. 

It’s really the sun and highest point of the mountains that decide when it’s time to go home. And dutifully, the children obey.

**+**

The seven of them are sitting on the floor of Will’s study with plates full of freshly grilled fish in front of them which they are all eating with their fingers right off the bone, even Stan. It’s a little greasy, a little salty, and it tastes to them like a heavenly manna because it was caught with their own hands.

The wood burning stove in the parlor keeps the room warm enough, but Jessica brings them blankets to drape over their shoulders. They huddle together, buzzing with excitement, curiosity seeping out of every pore. Will knows everything. They can’t find one single thing he doesn’t know. No matter what they ask him, he has an answer.

Will tells them stories of coal miners, of dreams for higher wages and safer working conditions, of folk anthems and union leaders. They talk of solidarity and compassion. He shows them photos of their hometown in the 1930s, emotions pulled taut because the local law enforcement was siding with the corporations and not with the working citizens.

He shows them photos of coal towns in the 1970s. He tells the story that Beverly holds fearfully close. Homes lifted from the ground by a landslide. The miners, their wives, and their children huddled together in the dead of night and the dawning realization that if they had been five seconds late getting out of their homes, they would have been nothing but an unfortunate casualty of the interests of wealthy men. The miners were paid in company tickets. Their families lived in company towns, in company houses with no bathrooms.

He tells them that what happened is called a war in the history books. People spilled and shed blood for their right to work with dignity in these mountains.

The history of their home is rich, and it’s bloody, and it’s still in motion to this day. Just before he sends them away for the night, he tells them: please, children—leave the mountains if you can. The sun sets too early here for children with hearts like you lot have.

If nothing else, promise me that you will leave these mountains.


	3. sixteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warning: abuse, disordered eating, the explicit discussion of a local legend concerning the murder/suicide of two gay men, snakes

Richie suffers from an indeterminate illness and he has been afflicted for quite some time. The symptoms include lightheadedness and distorted vision, usually losing his sense of spatial awareness and seeing things through those drunk goggles he had to put on for a Drug and Alcohol Awareness program at school. As far as he knows, it’s incurable.

So he’s sitting at the Dairy Hut with Eddie and Beverly, because Stan is working and they like to give him a hard time. And Eddie is drinking a milkshake, which is fine. Then one drop of milkshake catches itself on Eddie’s lip, which he then wipes off with his thumb. Okay, still fine. And then he takes that thumb and he puts it in his mouth and licks off the drop of milkshake. (What! The! _Fuck_!)

And all of this is happening in that weird slow motion, 90s romcom movie kind of filter, like the main dude’s love interest is descending the stairs on prom night and _why do birds suddenly appear every time you are near_? And Richie doesn’t realize he’s staring until Eddie says, “What? What the fuck are you looking at?”

Definitely incurable.

Richie can’t even think of some ingratiating, shitty joke that will turn Eddie feral and change the subject completely. He just shrugs and says, “Sorry, it’s the Adderall.”

“I _told_ you like two years ago that you need to tell your doctor about these weird lapses in consciousness you keep having! Those could be seizures—actual seizures, non-convulsive seizures, they’re called _petit mal_ seizures, or absence seizures, or focal seizures, and if you’re having those then you definitely need to get some brain scans done so they can check for consistent epileptic activity,” Eddie says, basically all in one breath.

“No, it’s cool,” Richie says, which always gets Eddie all pissed off.

“You’ll think back on this day when you suddenly start having violent tonic-clonic seizures out of nowhere, and you _die_ ,” Eddie seethes, wagging an emphatic finger in Richie’s face.

Beverly takes a curly fry and dips it in Richie’s milkshake. “I’m bored,” she says. She eats the fry. Strawberry is not a good match for curly fries. It’s vanilla or bust. Maybe chocolate. But Richie was feeling adventurous today and had to get a strawberry milkshake.

“I’m kind of bored too,” Eddie says, coming down from his indignant rant about the dangers of undiagnosed epilepsy.

There’s another reason why they’re at the Dairy Hut on a Friday night besides just giving Stan a hard time about his apron and his goofy little hat. They don’t have enough money for gas to drive out to the city, let alone actually do something to keep themselves entertained for the evening.

“Why don’t we go to Ben’s house,” Beverly suggests. “His mom is visiting family up in Lexington so we can drink in his basement? Maybe?”

Richie is game but Eddie is unsure as expected. “He said last time that he thinks his mom is starting to catch on to the fact that we’re pilfering her booze… She goes all the way to Tennessee to buy it so she keeps a real close eye on how much she has.”

“How about Mike’s, then?”

“I don’t even think I have enough gas to get out to the farm,” Richie says, frowning. “Anyway, I feel like you’re suspiciously avoiding suggesting that we go see what Bill is doing.”

Beverly shrugs. She doesn’t get flustered over things like that. No flushing cheeks, no eye contact avoidance because Richie is trying to call her out on something. Always the picture of certainty and confidence.

“Aren’t you two, like, dating or whatever?” Richie continues.

“Not really understanding how that’s your business, Tozier,” Beverly clips and she pops another curly fry into her mouth.

“Not my business? What? Are we not all best friends? I feel like this is definitely something I deserve to know—Eddie, back me up here!” Richie grabs Eddie’s arm and gives it a good shaking. Eddie remains neutral, focused on his milkshake. “Beverly, come on, this has been going on for like two years. It’s infuriating.”

“I’ll tell you about it when I feel like telling you about it.” That’s always been Beverly’s _thing_. But she usually only feels like talking about anything once it has boiled over into something grave—the way she was so tight-lipped on her parents’ deteriorating marital state until she showed up at Richie’s house one night with an overnight bag and said it wasn’t safe in her house anymore.

“I say we go sit on the porch swing,” Eddie says.

“We’re always sitting on the porch swing…” Richie whines, while Beverly throws her hands up in resignation. But it’s their only option.

There isn’t any inside seating at the Dairy Hut, just a few booths under a patio with a rusted metal roof. Stan is posted at the front window of the small kitchen, dead-eyed as he has fulfilled any task on his extensive list and no new customers have arrived since Richie, Beverly, and Eddie showed up. It’s rather slow for a Friday night.

“Stan, we’re gonna go sit on the porch,” Beverly calls out to him. He gives her a half-hearted salute. “You’ll come when you’re off work?”

“Date,” he says.

“With Patty?!” Beverly asks, childlike excitement in her eyes. This isn’t the first date Stan has been on with Patty, but the consistency of it is showing signs that they may soon upgrade to the boyfriend-girlfriend label and since this is roughly two years in the making, it’s a big deal to everyone.

“Dinner and a movie.”

“Fuck yeah! Get some, Stan the Man!” Richie goads, and Stan throws a precisely aimed french fry like a dart that hits Richie square between the eyes. “That was an incredible shot, I can’t even be mad.”

Eddie purses his lips around the straw to finish his milkshake. “I’ll bet you five dollars I can volley this cup into the trashcan,” he says. Without waiting for anyone to accept his bet, he does exactly that, and after cheering like Eddie just won an Olympic gold medal, the four of them realize this is the most exciting thing that’s happened to them all month.

**+**

Richie doesn’t really remember when he started feeling so fitful, so deeply unsatisfied with where he is. His childhood has thus far been beautiful and dreamlike. Having free roam through the cornfield, playing under the crabapple tree, exploring the woods to his heart’s content. Wading through the rivers back in old, secluded hollers in the summer. The fishing hole on the Hanlon farm. Riding their bikes three tiny towns over whenever they wanted to, because everything here is just smaller than anywhere else. Except for the mountains. Those are tall enough to reach the clouds—at least that’s how they looked when Richie was little.

They still have these things. It’s a little different—their afternoons are often divvied up among various activities and obligations. Eddie decided to break his mother’s heart and run track, which is probably the best thing that’s ever happened to him. Stan works, Mike’s responsibilities around the farm have increased—though they have the respite of occasionally helping out on the farm on the weekends, rewarded with homemade lunch and baked goods to take back home to their families. Jessica and Will think it’s funny that they consider farm work an escape. It reminds them of their good, old fashioned quality time together.

Everyone has something that occupies their time and it gets harder to grasp those beautiful, hazy afternoons together traipsing through the pasture, walking up and down the railroad tracks, spinning on the merry-go-round at the park until their stomachs hurt.

And if Richie can’t have that, then he doesn’t want to waste his time here anymore.

He talks to his parents about it. They are very understanding, but serious—if he really wants to leave, he needs to focus on school and use university as an out. It’s the best way to do this. So he tries. His grades are fine, sometimes they’re even good. He’ll probably get into an okay school. His parents were nice enough buy him a cheap used car to help curb his restlessness and they aren’t too strict with what he does with his free time. He’s grateful for them. They are the best parents he could have possibly asked for, tailor-made just for his impatient, lackadaisical existence.

Things have gotten a bit more tolerable since Beverly started spending a few nights a week in the guest bedroom. She had a private conversation with Maggie and Wentworth regarding her home situation and they agreed that she could take refuge in their home when needed. She helps out with chores and also tries to abide by their rules set for Richie that grades are to be fair—not perfect, just fair. The house feels so alive when Beverly is there. They have dinner together. They watch cheesy procedurals together before bed. Beverly loves to hear Wentworth’s same old stories about the time he followed Fleetwood Mac on tour. She soaks up their love like a sponge. It just works.

But even then, Richie is filled with this piercing, aching sadness that one day this will be over, too. He misses these moments before they’re even gone.

Beverly is sitting on railing that wraps around the porch and she’s smoking a cigarette. She’s tried to curb the habit since staying with the Toziers, but she still indulges every now and again. Richie sits on the porch swing that was just recently painted a soft blue. Eddie sits beside him with his legs stretched over Richie’s lap, and the three of them are very quiet.

Finally, Beverly says, “I visited my cousin out of state a couple of weeks ago. Audra. She lives in Tennessee. Did you know they built a tunnel that leads right through the mountain? Used to take four hours, now it only takes two.”

Richie did know that. His parents had driven him to the Kentucky-Tennessee border just to go through the tunnel for the thrill of crossing the state lines with such ease. It used to be a treacherous drive up and over the Cumberland mountains to get over to Tennessee.

“My mom said that tunnel is liable to collapse at any moment,” Eddie says. There’s a certain anxiousness in his voice, like maybe he actually believes that to be true.

“There’s no way,” Beverly says. “No way it’ll collapse. It’s really cool. I just got to thinking about how sad it is that the biggest thing to ever happen in my life is a tunnel being built through the mountain. Biggest thing to ever happen to anyone here, I suppose.”

“Now it’ll be easier to go to Dollywood,” Richie says. He had gone once with Bill’s family when Georgie was a toddler. They bought him a frozen lemonade and let him ride the underground roller coaster as many times as he wanted. Doesn’t feel great to think about it now, but it would be nice to go with everyone.

“Awww, yeah!” Beverly cheers, spinning around on the porch rail so that she’s facing Richie and Eddie. “I wanna go to Dollywood so bad! I haven’t been since I was in Girl Scouts. You’ve been, Eddie?” she asks.

Eddie shakes his head. “I’ve never left the county.”

There’s a moment of stunned silence.

“Really?” Beverly and Richie ask in unison.

“Mmmhmm.”

It makes sense. Sonia Kaspbrak rarely leaves her house for anything other than grocery shopping and taking Eddie to the doctor, let alone town. Richie can’t recall Eddie ever being permitted to go on any of their bigger school trips. He suddenly feels guilty for all of his self-pitying whining about his life. His parents have tried their hardest to fill his days with meaning since he was born.

“We’ll go someday,” Beverly says. “We’ll go everywhere.”

Eddie shifts around uncomfortably. Richie suddenly becomes very aware of his arms, which have up until this point been hanging loosely over Eddie’s outstretched legs. He pulls his arms back against himself tightly, finds that to be uncomfortable, and allows himself to stretch one arm out over Eddie’s legs. His hand finds Eddie’s ankle.

Then his fingers brush the jutting bone of Eddie’s ankle. It’s a lot to handle.

Beverly keeps the conversation going. “I’m always torn between wanting to get the fuck out of here and wanting to stay here. Not because I’m scared, just because… even though it hasn’t been good at home with my parents… it’s been good with you guys. I feel like we couldn’t have had this anywhere else.”

“I know I’ll miss it when I leave,” Richie says. “But my parents told me that we can’t avoid doing things just for the fear of missing something. Missing things is just a part of life.”

It’s difficult for Eddie to talk about this. Both Richie and Beverly know it, so they’re fine to let this topic fizzle out. But it’s Eddie who speaks next, it’s Eddie who asks them: “Do you guys think that… no matter where we go, we can go together?”

“Absolutely,” Beverly says without hesitation. “We’ll be together forever. That’s a promise. Right, Richie?”

“Yeah,” Richie says, feeling a little lighter than he did before. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

**+**

Beverly’s an okay runner. Not as fast as Eddie, but she’s pretty good. She can run from her house to Richie’s in decent time, which is saying something because her house is so far back in the mountains they can’t even get that new-fangled highspeed internet hooked up. They don’t salt the roads back there when it snows. Things like that.

She can run from Richie’s house to Bill’s in a little under a minute. She probably doesn’t need to run. A leisurely stroll would be fine, but there’s always something nipping at her heels. She isn’t sure what. Just something telling her to get there faster. Sometimes she even crawls out of the bedroom window and climbs down the side of the house just because she’s convinced herself it’s faster to do that than walk down the stairs and leave through the front door.

There’s no need to sneak around the Denbrough residence. They decided that Bill’s therapy didn’t _take_ , they said it was because he wasn’t trying hard enough or something like that, so their only natural solution was to start pretending he doesn’t exist. Beverly generally comes and goes as she pleases. Like tonight, the door has been left unlocked for her, she strolls in without knocking, and bolts up the stairs to Bill’s room.

He’s lying in bed reading something for his advanced English class—along with Ben and Mike, Bill has only gotten more bookish as the years pass. There’s something different about the way Bill does it, though. Ben and Mike have such an insatiable thirst for knowledge and they’re so eager to share what they learn. Bill just shrinks into himself every time he picks up a book, because he’s trying to avoid being alone with his own thoughts for even a second. Apparently it’s called _maladaptive coping_ , because it isn’t good to try and escape reality for too long. Like most good things, it’s only fine to do in moderation.

Beverly sits down beside him and messes with his hair. “Hey,” she says.

“Hey.”

“Tell me about your book.”

“It’s a little g-g-grim, I think. It’s a-a-about this boy wh-who drops out of school and has all these problems b-because his… br-brother died.”

“Oh,” Beverly says. She pulls her legs up on the bed and falls back, letting her head hit the pillow with a thump, right beside Bill. “Do you like it?”

“I g-guess. If I don’t s-s-sympathize with a character, I’ll try t-t-to look within myself and see why n-not. So even though I k-kind of connect with this g-guy, I still don’t feel like I g-g-get him,” Bill says. He angles his head slightly to look at Beverly, so close that his nose touches her cheek. “I’m h-h-happy to see you.”

She turns to face him as well, which leaves them nose to nose. “I’m happy to see you, too. I was with Richie and Eddie earlier and we were super bored. But I didn’t think you’d feel like hanging out, so I decided to leave you be. We’re thinking of going and snooping around that old abandoned house on the way to the Hanlon farm next weekend. In the spirit of Halloween.”

“How d-d-did you guys convince E-E-Eddie to go along with that?”

“You know how it is. Richie has a way. Do you want to come with us?”

“Sure. That sounds f-f-fun. I’ll bet Stan and Eddie will a-a-argue about the g-ghost in the barn again.”

“Oh my God,” Beverly groans, “every single time we do anything remotely scary they argue about the ghost in the barn!”

“Playing w-with the Ouija board that n-night at Richie’s house just m-made it worse,” Bill says, his eyes softening with a nostalgic glow. That had been a really great night for all of them.

“I brought nothing but chaos onto this family,” Beverly laughs. She scoots down a few inches and nestles her head in the crook of Bill’s neck. This is really all they do when they’re together. Bill is her boyfriend (?). The ? is the most important part. He’s a boy, and he’s her friend, and they spend time together, just the two of them. They talk quietly together even when there’s no need to be quiet. They take afternoon naps together on his bed when school lets out.

He is not improper with her. He has no expectations of her. They listen to music on his dad’s old record player and occasionally hold hands. She likes him.

Beverly isn’t stupid. She is aware that there is something amiss, but she isn’t in a hurry to figure out what it is. Bill serves a purpose in her life and she serves one in his, so this arrangement is indefinite, as far as she is concerned. The purpose being that they keep each other company and have been doing so in the same manner since they were fourteen years old.

“Do y-you know the story b-b-behind the murder house?” Bill asks.

“Just heard some people died in there is all.”

“All the o-old people say that it was a m-m-man who murdered his lover out of jealousy. And then k-killed himself. His lover was a m-man, too. And they s-say the b-b-blood stains a-a-are still on the floor and they never came out n-n-n-no matter how many times someone tried to clean them.”

“That’s sad.” Beverly thinks there’s no way that story can be true, because there’s no way a town like this would let two men live together in peace. “That makes me really sad to think about, Bill.”

“I w-w-was over at Mike’s and Mr. Will brought it up. He said p-p-people in this town can’t imagine two m-m-men living happily together, so they m-make up crazy stories like that.” Bill shifts slightly, resting his head on top of Beverly’s.

“I wonder why they didn’t try and get away,” Beverly muses. In the event that these mysterious men were real, she can’t imagine why they would want to stay in a place like this. The surface beauty can’t make up for the moral deficiency that slowly erodes at anyone who is even remotely different from what is the preferred norm. She has seen it with Mike, she has seen it with Stan, and she has seen it with anyone unlucky enough to be suspected as _queer_ , as they call it. With the accent it sounds like _quair_. Some mountain folk will happily whittle away at a person’s spirit slowly and still think themselves to be the model of that bullshit southern hospitality they like to pretend is real. 

Her dad is always telling her that she has too many liberal ideas in her head and that she needs to reel it in. He’s mentioned more than once that he thinks the Tozier boy and Kaspbrak boy are _quair_ and he would prefer her to not be friends with them. “People talk about them around town,” he said. “They might start thinking you’re like that too, Bevvie.” She went to the kitchen and poured an entire six pack of beer out in the sink. When her dad came after her with a belt for that, she ran and ran all the way to Richie’s house. She hugged Richie, and she cried, but she wouldn’t tell him why.

“Maybe they l-l-loved it here,” Bill says. “It c-could have been a sacrifice they w-w-were willing to make, living in a p-p-place like this. I saw some old pictures of that house b-b-back in the day. It was really a-amazing. They must have really l-l-loved that house. And e-e-each other.”

“Do you think it’s a sacrifice you would be willing to make, were you in that position?” Beverly asks. Here she goes again. Leave or stay? It’s all she can think about. Bill isn’t a restless flight risk like Beverly and Richie. But he never seems particularly happy either. He doesn’t speak about these things unless asked and sometimes she’s too scared to ask. Maybe he’ll say something that makes her have to reconsider her own feelings, and that’s never fun.

“Probably n-n-not. I don’t think I’m s-s-strong enough,” he says after a considerable silence.

“Me neither.”

“It sure is b-b-beautiful back here, though.”

“Sure is, huh… Best sunrises you’ll ever see in your life.”

Stan receives a phone call early on Saturday morning.

“Hey, it’s Ben.”

“Oh… hi Ben, is everything okay? You sound kind of sad,” Stan says. He was half expecting—hoping for—it to be Patty, but they just saw each other the night before and he feels that perhaps he is becoming too greedy with her time and attention. She’s a busy girl with lots of friends and extracurriculars, after all. 

“Well… my mom and I were at the grocery store and we heard some people saying that Mr. Hanlon has been in poor health. Mike hadn’t even said anything to us… and we haven’t been to the farm for a couple of weeks. So it got me feeling bad. I was wondering if you would want to take some covered dishes over to them with me?”

“Yeah, I can do that. Just give me time to put something together and then meet me here. What will you make?”

“A blackberry cobbler.” Ben’s mother makes the best blackberry cobbler in all the land, as everyone knows, and Ben has been working hard to carry on the family tradition whenever the opportunity arises. “What are you making?”

“I… don’t really know. I have to ask my mom for help. I’ve never, uh, taken a covered dish to someone before.”

“I’m sure your mom is going to make something great! I’ll see you later, Stanley!” Ben ends the call.

As previously stated, Stan has _never_ made someone a covered dish before. His parents have, and he has sometimes accompanied them, but he has never made a dish _and_ delivered it to the intended recipient himself.

Stan is a sixteen-year-old boy with a job and a debit card and driver’s license. Stan is permitted to drive to the city to take a girl on a date. Stan has a 4.0 GPA. Stan has a savings account to which he regularly contributes. Stan is the picture of maturity.

But…

Stan needs his mother’s help.

Mrs. Andrea Uris knows how to do everything. Stan knows this for a fact, because he has never once asked for guidance that she was not able to provide. So she is going to teach him the proper way to prepare and deliver a covered dish for a friend who is in poor health. And he’ll never have to ask for help to do this again and for the rest of his life, he will have the skills necessary to traverse the terrifying reality that sometimes people get sick. Sometimes, even, they die, but he does not want to think about that right now.

Andrea is singing to herself in the living room as she works on her current puzzle. It’s an overly intricate floral design that gives Stan a headache when he looks at it. He always helps her out with her puzzles when he has the time, but he is not a fan of this one, so he has been avoiding it as much as he can.

“Mom,” he says. He’s standing in the doorway like he used to when he was little and had to wake his parents up in the dead of night to tell them he’d thrown up everywhere.

“Stanley,” she says, placing an ill-fit piece into the center of the puzzle. She then tries it again for good measure. Still wrong. 

“Ben said someone at the grocery store said that Mr. Hanlon isn’t feeling well. He asked me if I would like to go with him to the farm and take a covered dish.”

“Ah! You’re asking your mother for help, aren’t you?” She turns to face him, her cheeks are rosy and her eyes are curiously wide, like she’s surprised by something, but Stan isn’t sure what. “Of course, my dearest, I’ll teach you how to make kugel and you can take that over to the Hanlons.”

This is not the first time his mother has offered to teach Stan how to cook. He’s open to the idea, he finds it rather fun and he likes spending time with her, but he’s a perfectionist to a fault and drives himself to the brink of insanity over the smallest details. Andrea says, “It all tastes the same going down!” Easy for her to say when everything she does is so effortlessly perfect.

They go to the kitchen together and Andrea opens up the rear patio door, leaving the screen door closed to allow a cool breeze to circulate in and out. Stan thinks if he made comparative lists of his mom’s personality and his personality, they would mostly be different, but one thing they most definitely have in common is that they both run hot and value good air circulation in the home. Another thing is puzzles. So two things for sure that definitively prove Stan is her child (he used to have his doubts when he was younger, because his mother is rather silly and Stan has been told he’s rather humorless).

“I beli _eeeeeee_ ve we have everything we need,” she croons to herself, flipping open cabinets, peering into the pantry, and sticking her head deep into the fridge. “My dearest, will you get the egg noodles and sugar from the pantry, and… let’s see, Maggie and Went brought over some dried mulberries from the tree, so we can use those… And I need one of the big glass dishes from that—” She extends one leg out. “—cabinet.”

Stan retrieves the glass dish in question as Andrea emerges from the fridge with cottage cheese, sour cream and butter, shoves those off on Stan, dips back down and grabs cream cheese and several eggs.

“Okay. Pay close attention, my sweet, because I am only going to tell you this once.” She’s always saying that, but it isn’t true. She tells Stan anything he needs to know as many as he needs to hear it. “We’re going to plump up the mulberries with some hot water. The noodles—we don’t want them too soft, so we won’t boil them for any more than five or so minutes.”

Stan nods, watching Andrea flit around the kitchen. She drags the blender out from the corner where it sits waiting for the fated day someone wants to make a milkshake or something, otherwise seeing very little use in the Uris kitchen except for when it’s time to make kugel. In one sweeping motion she throws open two cabinets and grabs a bowl and a pot. It’s like she doesn’t even have to think about what she’s doing.

They set the oven to preheat and then put some water to boil. Andrea continues her instruction: “So what we’re going to do is blend all of these together—the cottage cheese, the sour cream, the cream cheese …” She stops, raising her eyebrows at Stan like she’s expecting him to do something.

Oh. He begins divvying out the ingredients based on his mother’s instructions, the cottage cheese, sour cream, cream cheese, sugar, butter and a little bit of salt. She cracks the eggs into the mixture because she likes to show off that she knows how to crack eggs with one hand. Stan still hasn’t gotten the hang of that. He blends everything together until it’s a smooth, creamy consistency. When he was little, he used to try and dip his finger into the blender when his mom turned away to get a taste.

While Andrea pulls the boiling pot off of the burner, Stan tells her about how Maggie and Wentworth throw noodles at the wall to test their doneness.

“My, my, they are southerners through and through,” she laughs, taking the blender and pouring the mixture over the noodles. “Grab me a wooden spoon, my love, please. And drain the mulberries so we can mix those in.”

Once the mulberries are added to the pot, Andrea steps aside to allow Stan to stir together the different ingredients. She notes the concerned look on his face. “It’s okay if it’s a little liquidy right now, it’ll thicken up once it’s baked. Don’t worry! You’re such a worrywart, you get that from your father. Certainly not from me.” They move the mixture to the glass pan and sprinkle sugar and cinnamon on top, and into the oven it goes. “An hour to bake and once it’s rested, you can take it over to the farm. Now don’t forget to let Jessica know that your father and I will be over sometime this week, once he’s back in town. And you should ask if there’s anything you can do to help out around the farm.”

Remember that comparative list of Andrea’s personality versus Stan’s personality? Stan realizes where he gets his fastidious, dutiful nature from. It’s from his mother. Even though she’s a little more cheerful about it, the foundation is the same.

They sit together at the kitchen table and chat while they wait for the kugel to bake through. He tells her about his date with Patty. They went to go a see a movie that Stan wasn’t particularly interested in, but it was an adaptation of Patty’s favorite book from childhood about a girl who meets a family that accidentally drank from a fountain of eternal life. The hero wants the girl to drink from the fountain as well so that they can be together, but in the end it’s revealed that she chose to live a happy, full life and die of old age. On the way home, Patty asked Stan what he would have done in that situation.

“I think I’d probably do what she did. It looks like there’s a lot of grief in living forever,” he had said.

“But don’t you think there’s a lot of grief in losing your true love?” Patty asked.

“Sure, but it looks like she ended up meeting someone she liked, having children, and being really happy,” Stan said. Patty told Stan he wasn’t a _romantic_.

“No, I think you’re right on that one,” Andrea says, after careful consideration. “It doesn’t mean it wasn’t a difficult decision for her to make and that she didn’t live with a certain kind of pain after making it. We can’t make decisions solely for the sake avoiding pain. Sometimes both options are painful in their own way.”

“You think Patty will still like me even though she thinks I’m not a romantic?” Stan asks.

“Of course!” Andrea reaches out and moves an errant curl away from Stan’s face. “We’re all different, Stanley. Your father and I disagree on quite a bit, but we love each other dearly. Learning about those differences was an exciting part of getting to know each other. You and Patty will find much more to disagree on the more time you spend together. It’s fun, I promise.”

Ben shows up once the kugel is out of the oven and resting, holding a ceramic pan containing the most delicious blackberry cobbler to ever be cobbled this corner of the Appalachian Mountains. Andrea reminds them to make sure they ask Jessica if she needs help with anything and they dutifully nod and promise her that they will.

Going through town and out to the countryside is about a twenty-minute bike ride, if they keep up a good pace. Stan could drive, but something about that makes him feel weird. Like every time he drives anywhere that would have been reasonably accessible by bike, a little bit of the magic seeps out of his life.

“My mom said to not worry,” Ben says. “You know, worry about Mr. Hanlon being… sick. Like, really sick. He may just be under the weather, as far as we know.”

“Oh,” Stan says. Admittedly, he has been worried since Ben called him earlier, though he was able to keep himself distracted by cooking with his mom. Conversations made on a bike ride tend to ebb and flow, so any silent lull between the two of them has opened Stan’s mind up to a type of fear he has really yet to experience in his life before today. He has lost grandparents. Distant older relatives. But before today he never actually stopped to think that one day, his own parents would die. And his friends’ parents would die. And it’s hitting him hard.

“She says that when you worry about something before you have a real reason to worry, it’s called borrowing trouble.”

“I like that,” Stan says with a small smile. “Borrowing trouble.”

They cross over the railroad tracks, covered dishes rattling away in the baskets of their bikes.

“Have you told anyone else?” Stan asks.

“Well… no. For a lot of different reasons. I didn’t think Eddie would cope well, and he would have wanted Richie to come with us, and I just didn’t think any of that was a good idea. Beverly’s phone is cut off for the month. And… well, it’s a bad time of year for Bill.”

“Hmm,” Stan says.

“You’re really mature and trustworthy, you know. That’s why my first instinct was to call you.”

“I appreciate that a lot, Ben. My mom taught me how to make kugel. You’ve had it before; she’s always sending it home with everyone.”

“Oh, wow, that’s really cool, Stan! I love when my mom shows me her recipes. Though I’m not sure if I’ll ever make anything that tastes as good as her cooking,” Ben says sweetly. He loves his mom. Most people love their moms, but Ben is particularly close with his, and he is the spitting image of her compassionate, loving heart.

She’s overflowing with love, just like Ben. Stan has a pretty good back and forth with most of his friends’ moms, even Sonia Kaspbrak, who is decently cordial with him underneath the condescending questions about the _funny_ things Jewish people _do_. He has always been welcome in the Tozier home, the Denbroughs are still kind to him on the off chance he sees them, the Hanlons treat him like their second son, even Beverly’s mom is nice to him when he stops by the Corner Café to pick up dinner for his parents. But there is just something about Arlene that’s different. She’s like a perfect sitcom mom.

Of course, he knows that she must have her moments, everyone does, but he has never seen her be cross. One day, Stan and Richie went over to Ben’s house to play and they decided to toss a football around in the living room. Arlene asked them to please go outside, and they said okay, but not before Ben tossed the football once more over to Richie, who was so caught off guard that he fell backwards and straight through one of the living room windows. Not even then was Arlene even the slightest bit mad. She grabbed Richie up and pulled him over the broken glass, squeezed his face and checked for any injuries, and enveloped him in a hug. A hug! Before saying a word about her broken window. Stan was speechless. It made him want to grow up to be as kind as that.

They ride the rest of the way in silence except for a brief conversation about the old abandoned house the Losers have made plans to visit the next week. Their bikes are left at the fence at the front of property, leaning and always propped open during the day, and Mike is out on the front porch with Jessica when they make their way up to the farmhouse.

“Hey!” Mike says, standing up to greet them. Jessica stays where she is in her rocking chair. She’s exhausted, it’s plain to tell. “What are you guys doing here?” he asks.

“Well…” Ben shuffles his feet awkwardly.

“Someone in town said that… Mr. Hanlon wasn’t feeling well, so we thought we would bring by some food for you guys. I brought kugel and Ben has, ah. A… cobbler…” Stan trails off, noting the curious look on Jessica’s face. She has her hand pressed to her heart.

“You brought us some food?” she asks.

They nod in unison.

“Come here, boys. Get up here right now,” she says, gesturing for them to come in for a hug. They kneel down beside the rocking chair and she throws an arm around each of them, careful not to knock the dishes out of their hands. “You are just the sweetest things I’ve ever met.”

“Dad is in the living room resting for a spell,” Mike says. “It’s been… hard. We’re not sure what’s wrong, but he’s been getting some tests done.”

“I’m really sorry,” Stan says quietly. Ben is already sniffling.

“Oh, now, don’t start crying before anything even happens,” Jessica says, rubbing the top of Ben’s head. “Sometimes it happens once we get older, we just have an episode of poor health every now and again. Everything’s going to be fine, just… pray on it, if you will.” She sits back and pulls her hands to her lap, that look of exhaustion overcoming her features again.

Mike invites them inside and tells Will that there are visitors. He’s half-asleep on the couch, blanket over his legs, some old black and white movie playing on the television. “They brought us some dessert. Mrs. Hanscom’s blackberry cobbler and Mrs. Uris’s kugel.”

“Well, is that so!” Will says, straightening his posture just a bit. He’s putting on a happy face for them, they can tell. “I’ll never say no to some cobbler and kugel, that’s for damn sure.”

“We also wanted to see if there’s anything you need help with on the farm,” Stan says.

Now it’s Mike’s turn to shuffle around awkwardly. There’s a brief moment of silence before he says. “Well… we actually had to hire more help a couple of weeks ago. That’s why I hadn’t invited you guys over.”

It’s weird, isn’t it, Stan thinks. Here they all are, sixteen years old, high school kids, wanting to go on dates and pilfer booze and work a few hours a week after school. And he feels heartbroken at the idea that there may never be a need for him to come back to the Hanlon farm and do work on the weekends, his precious weekends.

“I see,” Stan says. “Well, if ever the need arises, you know where to find us.”

“Sure thing, boys. I do appreciate it. One of you want to serve me up a plate?”

Mike takes the dishes to the kitchen and comes back a few minutes later with three plates for Will, Ben, and Stan. He then goes back to make a plate for himself. The three boys sit on the floor in a semicircle around the couch and carry on a gentle conversation with Mr. Hanlon.

“So tell me why we’re down four young’uns?” he asks.

“We wanted to keep the energy calm,” Stan says, and Will laughs.

“The seven of you do tend to get rowdy when you’re together.”

“Figured Richie and Eddie would have you tearing your hair out after five minutes,” Ben says lightly. It’s a well-known fact among everyone’s parents that there is never a moment of quiet when those two are together.

“Those boys sure found each other like a mirror, didn’t they? I suppose you all did,” Will says. He lets out a deep, contended sigh.

The wood burning stove is going. Everyone is warm and cozy. Stan never wants to leave. Unfortunately, the well-mannered boy in him knows that he shouldn’t put too much pressure on Will to feel like he has to host them. So he tells them that they’re going to head back to town and to please give his parents a call if they need anything.

As they are getting ready to leave, Will stops them. “Boys—now, let’s keep this between us for now. But I was going through some old papers in my study recently and I found a piece someone had written about… well, it’s about Eddie’s father.”

Stan looks down at his feet. Ben hugs his arms around himself tightly.

“I know Eddie has previously shown some, ah, interest in learning a bit more about what happened. One of you kids can sit down with him and ask him if he would like to see the article. When the timing is right. Will you do that for me?”

They both nod.

“Thank you kindly, boys. Be safe on the way home.”

They promise they’ll be careful and hurry home while there’s still some daylight left. There isn’t much to talk about, just the old abandoned house again, so most of the trip back to town is taken in silence. Ben eventually parts ways from Stan to head in the direction of his house.

When Stan gets home, he curls up on the couch beside his mother and tells her that he loves her very much.

The first time Eddie’s mother ever laid a hand on him, he was thirteen years old. He’s always considered himself lucky in that regard—yeah, my mom is a controlling fucking freak who has convinced me that I either currently have or will soon fall victim to every disease under the sun, against my better judgment, until her judgment _became_ my better judgment but! She doesn’t lay a hand on me.

It wasn’t even like she just hauled back and hit him or anything. Maybe it doesn’t even count. What happened was that she had gotten some fresh fruit at the store and she got a different kind of apple than usual, some new type that normally wasn’t carried in their little bumfuck grocery store. Eddie was sat at the table watching her cut it into neat, uniform little slices. She put the apple slices in front of him and he ate them. It tasted okay. Within a few minutes, his arms were covered in hives.

Sonia then grabbed him by the back of the shirt, dragged him to the bathroom, and stuck her fingers down his throat until he puked the whole apple back up. Then she called poison control. Then she took him to the hospital. The doctor said it was okay, oral allergies are really common. She was all screaming and crying that he was going into anaphylaxis and dying. Eddie was just sitting there dead-eyed wondering what the fuck was happening. It was probably the first moment in his life he ever stopped to just think _what the fuck is happening._

He got a little weird about it for a while. Any time he ate fruit, he felt the desire to go to the bathroom and stick his fingers down in his throat. So he did. Then he started eating fruit for the sole purpose of sticking his fingers down his throat. Then when he was fourteen, he learned about something called purging in health class and the teacher showed a bunch of pictures of what happens to your throat and teeth if you throw up a lot. Admittedly, he had a bit of an episode over that. Crying that he had already done irreparable harm to his esophagus. His teeth were going to fall right out of his head.

Beverly is who he ended up telling. He didn’t know who else to go to. Richie has this thing about Eddie. It’s not something Eddie feels like he can ignore and it isn’t something he wants to take for granted. It’s just the way Richie is. He just gets a little upset over Eddie sometimes. Zero logic, no survival skills, if it has anything to do with Eddie his brain shuts off and goes into panic mode.

So he told Beverly. They had a pretty long talk about. He went to her house and everything, which he normally doesn’t like to do because he’s scared of drinking well water. He packed a few bottles of water for himself and rode his bike as far back into the holler as he could before he had to get off and walk the rest of the way. Her dad wasn’t home, but her mom was. He thinks her mom likes him a lot. She let Eddie hang out in Beverly’s room with the door closed.

Beverly sat on her bed with her back against the wall, and Eddie laid there with his head in her lap. She played with his hair. He told her about the apple, the very common oral allergy, and the irrational desire to eat fruit and immediately puke it back up. Beverly asked if it had anything to do with his weight or body image. He said no. It was just because his mom shoved her filthy fucking fingers down his throat and made him throw an apple up and now when he eats apples or apple-adjacent foods his brain is just like, “Throw that up right now.”

“We can go talk to the guidance counselor together over lunch on Monday,” Beverly said. So they did. Eddie got a bunch of pamphlets he was supposed to read and some worksheets to fill out. The guidance counselor said usually people do this because of self-esteem issues or a lack of control in their lives. A lightbulb went off above Eddie’s head.

“I have no control over any part of my life,” he said. And he told her as much as he felt like he could tell her without risking the state being called and then removing him from the home. He met with her a few times and she encouraged him to make a decision for himself. Anything. He told her about how he wants to run track in high school.

“I think you should, Eddie. Decide right now that you’ll try out for track when the time comes.”

“What if my mom gets mad at me?”

“What if? It seems like she’s always upset.”

“She is, but what if she gets mad _at me_?”

“Then she gets mad at you. She’ll get over it. I believe that.”

Eddie decided he was going to try out for track. That didn’t exactly mitigate the problem of having a traumatic relationship with fruit, but he has dealt with that as best he could. That’s not the point of the story.

The second time Eddie’s mother ever laid a hand on him is when he told her he would be running track. She told him no, he would not be running track. He said _yes, I will be_. She slapped him across the face and he started laughing like she’d just told the funniest joke. She grabbed his face and squeezed it really hard and shook him back and forth.

“Why are you trying to break my heart?” she asked.

“I’m not,” he said. “But I’m going to do this.” He was still laughing which confused Sonia a lot, so she let go of him and took a step back, tears in her eyes. Then he left and went to Richie’s house and played video games.

He is making another decision for himself today. He’s considering telling his mother that he’s doing it just to see how she reacts, just to see if she wants to try and shove her fingers down his throat or smack him across the face. She’s sitting in the kitchen talking on the phone with her sister who lives in Louisville and complaining about everything. Complaining about the townsfolk and the city water and the fact that an _ethnic_ family moved in a few houses down.

Eddie leaves without telling her. Richie is waiting for him outside in his old clunker of a car. There’s no CD player in the car, so the Losers have been making mixes the old-fashioned way. On cassette tapes. Lately Beverly’s been into Kate Bush. That’s who’s playing when Eddie climbs in the car. She has this song about how—at least Eddie thinks it’s about how—people can’t truly understand each other and the only way they could is if they were able to switch places. She sings this line that’s like, _there is thunder in our hearts, is there so much hate for the ones we love_? And that’s one of those things that plays on a loop in Eddie’s head right before he falls asleep.

“Ready, Spaghetti?” Richie asks, grinning.

“Shut up. Yes,” Eddie says. By the time Sonia comes clambering out on the front porch screaming for Eddie to come back, they’re already driving over the bridge. Take a right by the brown brick Methodist church. Take another right. And then they head up to the north end of town. There’s some old houses no one lives in anymore, a trailer park, and then the road dips off into some crumbling, unmaintained concrete.

“Fuckin’… hold on tight I guess,” Richie mutters, narrowly missing a pothole that would have royally fucked up his car. “What the fuck, this is—” A particularly nasty bump sends them both flying up in their seats, and Richie instinctively does that thing he does when they’re driving on backroads and he throws his arm out and grabs Eddie’s arm to hold him steady in his seat. Maggie does the same thing when she’s driving.

Eventually the concrete fades off into a gravel road and trees swell up and around the mouth of the holler. Richie figures he could probably take the car a little further in, but Eddie says that it’s okay and they can walk.

Richie looks at Eddie, tilts his head slightly.

“What?” Eddie asks, avoiding direct eye contact. He knows what Richie is going to say.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Richie asks.

“Yes. I’m sure. I’ve been thinking on it for two years. I want to do it.”

Richie twists his mouth into something like frown and then turns off the engine. “Okay, Eddie. Let’s do it, then.”

It’s early in the afternoon, but the second they cross the threshold from the real world into the misty dreamstate of the north holler, it feels like they’ve skipped ahead six or so hours. They don’t talk much at first, just walk side by side with their arms brushing together, and the sound of gravel crunching together under their feet fills in the silence.

Eddie decides to bite the bullet and grab Richie’s hand. “Thank you,” he says.

“No problem, Eds.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“I’d do anything for you, you know,” Richie says nonchalantly. He squeezes Eddie’s hand.

The thing about a holler is that there’s only one way in and one way out. It isn’t as if they are capable of getting lost. They just need to keep walking until they find what they are looking to find. There are some old dilapidated houses that one could miss if they weren’t looking close, reclaimed by the woods. Some conspicuously placed stones that are possibly unmarked graves from decades ago.

Eventually they see the church around the bend of the stream that cuts through the length of the holler, accessible by way of a bridge that consists of no more than two pieces of plywood. It would probably collapse under their weight if they attempted to cross it, so they choose to take running leaps over the stream as to not soak their shoes through. When Eddie lands, Richie grabs his arm to hold him stable, and then they resume holding hands and stare up at the Tabernacle Church of God.

It’s a rudimentary building, a four-corner box with a shoddy steeple built on the top. The sides were once painted white, but it’s mostly weathered and peeled. It likely wasn’t even in good shape when it was still in use. There’s a sign out front that reads:

**TABERNACLE CHURCH OF GOD**

**PREACHING TO THE LOST SHEEP OF THE HOUSE OF ISRAEL**

**DEADLY POISON DRINKING**

**SERPENT HANDLING**

**HEALING SICK**

**PREACHING BY ROBERT GRAY**

The dry rotted cedar steps make painful noises under their feet. Woodland vegetation is growing through the slat floors and around the wood benches laid in uniform lines that serve as pews. There’s a piano at the front that somehow looks untouched among it all. Sunbeams are making their way through the damaged roof, piercing through the darkness in a way that makes it feel like it’s both day and night at the same time.

Several metal wire cages sit stacked beside the pulpit.

“Kept the snakes in there, I suppose,” Eddie says, his gut sinking like someone’s tied an anvil to it.

“Mr. Hanlon told me they keep the snakes starved so that they’re weak when it’s time to hold them. To try and curb the aggression. And avoid getting bitten,” Richie says.

“Cowardly, it seems.”

“Seems like it defeats the purpose of the whole thing. If they’re so scared that they have to starve the snakes then what’s the point.”

Eddie laughs. “We’re trying to rationalize people who hold snakes and drink rat poison on purpose,” he sighs. It just feels so silly. 

Richie laughs, too. “Human nature, right? Trying to make sense of it all.”

A piece of cloth hangs suspended from the ceiling over the pulpit.

**MARK 16:17-18**

**THEY SHALL TAKE UP SERPENTS;**

**AND IF THEY DRINK ANY DEADLY THING**

**IT SHALL NOT HURT THEM**

“I don’t remember a lot about my dad, but I do have a few memories of waiting for him to come home from the coal mines,” Eddie says. He cautiously approaches the pulpit, overwhelmed with a fear that some violent, vengeful snake ghosts are lurking in the crawlspace under the weathered, unfinished wood floor. He hangs on to Richie’s hand as tight as he can. “I wonder how many times he was actually coming home from here.”

There’s an open Bible sitting on the pulpit. _Behold, the lord came with many thousands of Holy ones, to execute judgment upon all, and to convict all the ungodly of their ungodly deeds which they have done in an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him._

Sitting in the corner of the frontmost pew are several plain glass bottles. Eddie stares at them so long he feels like he’s going to crumble to dust. The scene he conjures up in his head isn’t even particularly scary. Just a bunch of people singing and dancing. A snake hisses in the hands of a faceless preacher. And the blurry image of his dad, the only way Eddie really remembers him, opens one of these bottles and drinks. It’s the way he’s always imagined it, the scene that plays through his mind right when he’s in that hazy dreamlike stretch of time between asleep and awake. When you’re already starting to dream before you’re even asleep.

“Well,” he says quietly, “now I know, I suppose.”

Now he knows, and he’s not really any better for it. But it gives him a solid feeling of relief. The thirst of morbid curiosity is adequately quenched. He turns to Richie and wraps his arms around his waist, burying his face in Richie’s chest.

Richie jolts like he’s received an electric shock. There’s a stunned silence before he closes his arms around Eddie. “Proud of you,” he says against Eddie’s hair.

“No reason to be proud,” Eddie says, voice muffled against the material of Richie’s sweater.

“There’s plenty to be proud of, Eds. Everything you’ve done over the last two years.”

Richie has gotten stupidly tall since they were kids. Eddie pulls back, just enough to get a good look at his face. There’s a need for something hanging between them, to clarify something, a vague and unknown something. Then Richie kisses him.

It’s a quick kiss. Respectful how Richie cuts it short and waits for Eddie to give him a slow, careful nod— _it’s okay, I want you to—_ before he leans in and kisses him again, fuller this time, but gentle and caring. Tastes like cigarettes.

Eddie can feel tears welling up behind his eyelids. He lets them fall and streak down Richie’s face as much as his own.

Bill and Mike spot each other closing in on the murder house from opposite directions. It seems that they are the first to arrive. They leave their bikes concealed in the tall grass at the front of the property and approach the house with the appropriate, respectful reservation.

“You think this is okay?” Mike asks.

“I h-h-have conflicted feelings.”

Mike tests the sturdiness of the steps leading up the large wrap-around porch and deems them safe to climb. They sit with their legs hanging off the side and wait for the others to arrive.

“I saw a f-f-fairy circle on my way here,” Bill says. “A p-perfect ring of mushrooms. One t-t-time Richie sat in one and the next day he sprained his a-a-ankle playing soccer at recess.”

“It’s always Richie, isn’t it,” Mike says, shaking his head.

“He d-d-does all sorts of crazy things to impress Eddie. But it d-d-doesn’t impress Eddie as much as it just p-p-pisses him off.”

“I think he’s happy as long as he gets a reaction,” Mike says. “You know when Eddie’s eyes get all crazy and he starts moving his hands around like—” Mike demonstrates by emphatically chopping his hands through the air. “That just keeps Richie going.”

More time passes and the day moves towards the late afternoon. The others have yet to arrive, so Bill and Mike are beginning to get bored. There’s a stark stillness in the air, an unfamiliar silence, kind of makes them feel like they’re the last two people left on earth, sitting over the edge of time. A gust of wind blows through the grass and the trees. It’s loneliness—that’s the feeling. Not between the two of them, but around them and from within the house.

“Let’s g-g-go on in,” Bill says.

Mike looks at him, tilts his head.

“They’re t-t-taking way too long,” Bill continues. “I don’t want us to w-w-wait till dark, it’ll b-be too scary.” So Mike agrees and the two of them stand up and brush the accumulated dirt and dust from the porch off of their clothes.

The front door is slightly ajar. Bill leans forward and peeks through the opening, then gently pushes the door open as to not accidentally cause it to fall off the hinges. He walks inside and Mike follows close behind.

There is some old, dusty furniture sitting around—a sofa with the pillows slashed open by other local kids. A writing desk with a three-legged chair pushed under. There’s graffiti on the walls, initials of couples, some racial slurs, and song lyrics. Even with the flashlights Mike brought for them, it’s hard to see anything in great detail. Almost makes it look like it exists in black and white.

“I suppose I can see why everyone’s scared of this place. You would think a house like this—whoever it was left to would want to make use of it. But they just left it here to rot,” Mike says.

“Makes you think that whatever h-h-horrible thing supposedly happened here m-m-most definitely d-d-did happen,” Bill says. He links his arm through Mike’s, and they walk together through the living room and into the kitchen. There’s an old gas stove and a doorless refrigerator. There appears to be some evidence that people have spent the night—bottles on the floor that probably once held moonshine and a discarded blanket crumpled up in the corner.

They double back to the living room and up the stairs that lead to the second story. There are two small, modest bedrooms that are mostly unremarkable. Metal-framed beds with ratty floral bedding. And then the master bedroom dauntingly at the end of the hall—the supposed stage of the tragic love story of two men driven to insanity by the mountains around them.

“I don’t think it’s true,” Mike says as Bill’s hand hovers over the doorknob. “I talked to my dad about it—he said it’s just some old folktale. There’s nothing to prove it really happened. And he said… he said something like, some people will only accept the existence of gay people if their story is tragic. The tragedy is meant to be cautionary… Kind of like, this is what would happen to _you_. If you were _gay_.”

Bill opens the door. There is nothing special about the room. A bed, an armoire, and homophobic slurs graffitied on the wall. There are strange stains on the floor, but they don’t seem to be blood. It’s just a room. A sad, empty room. They walk inside together and look around, stepping over broken glass and a ratty old mattress someone has left on the floor. The bed is neatly made and the thick layer of dust over the bedding indicates that it has been left alone for quite some time. One of those weird displays of respect mountain folk will do even for the worst of sinners.

“It won’t h-h-happen to us,” Bill says. He unlinks his arm from Mike’s. Instead, he takes Mike’s hand. “No m-m-matter where we go… n-n-nothing like that is going to happen t-t-to us, okay?”

Mike squeezes his hand. “I want to think that’s true. I have to think it’s true, or I might go crazy living back in these mountains,” he says quietly. Mike has never been one to complain about their home, surprisingly so considering the grief he’s been given since he was a child.

“Even if we h-h-have to take our t-t-time, we’ll get out. But… even if we n-n-never do… we won’t b-b-be a tragedy, Mikey. That will n-n-never happen to us,” Bill says. He turns to face Mike resolutely, looks like he’s about to cry. Not really from sadness, more like frustration. Like a kid who can’t properly express their feelings.

“I believe you,” Mike says. “I do, Bill.” With his other hand, he reaches up and he touches Bill’s face, moves his hair out of his eyes, stays there like that until he can sense that they are on the same wavelength. That Bill understands that Mike understands and they’re in this together.

Bill and Mike are not the tragic heroes of a local folk legend. They aren’t caricatures in an intricately planned novel published with an agenda. They aren’t the side characters in some politically incorrect movie from thirty years ago. They are Mike, and they are Bill, and they are together, and they are bigger and stronger than any kudzu covered mountain that would wrap its vines around their ankles and pull them back each time they try to step forward.

This house is a grave in and of itself. The men who may have lived here do not have gravestones in the cemetery with all the good folk of their humble town. The only way to honor them is to stand in this room and imagine a world that would have been kinder to them.

There’s a commotion downstairs which jolts both Bill and Mike out of their silent reverie. They can tell instantly by the sound of Richie and Beverly’s raucous laughter and the distant buzz of conversation between familiar, loving voices—it’s the other five. And so the two of them regain their composure and go downstairs to greet their friends.


	4. eighteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CONTENT WARNING: THIS CHAPTER DEALS WITH THE EXPLICIT, VIOLENT DEATH OF FAMILY MEMBERS. it also contains a lighthearted, teasing attitude towards "hillbilly" culture, if that bothers anyone.

By the time he reaches eighteen years old, Richie feels like he would sooner slash open his stomach and let his guts unspool like a blood soaked ball of yarn than spend another second in these mountains. But the season changes towards winter, he remains trapped, and Eddie is still somehow cloaked in his summer skin—light tan, freckles splashed across his nose. It makes everything tolerable.

“Did you hear about Henry Bowers?” Eddie asks. Richie wants to ask, _can we please not talk about Henry Bowers while we’re making out in my bed_?

“He was found guilty, right?” Richie moves Eddie’s hair off of his forehead. He’s been wearing it a little longer than usual lately. He kisses Eddie right below his eye and above his cheek. He kisses Eddie on his nose and on his lips. He feels like if he is ever in a position where he can’t kiss Eddie, he might just die.

“Yeah. He’ll probably never see the light of day again is what everyone’s saying,” Eddie says, and he has this far off look in his eyes. Thinking about their childhood, probably, the years of torment. The day Henry Bowers completely destroyed the foundation of Eddie’s perception of his own life. 

“Good. Better late than never, I guess.” 

“Some people are born rotten.” Eddie wraps his arms around Richie’s neck and pulls him close, their noses touching. Doesn’t close the gap for a kiss, just holds him there. Richie feels vulnerable, too vulnerable, wonders what it is that makes it so easy for Eddie to reduce him to such a state. Eddie says, “Some people don’t have an ounce of goodness in them at all.”

“Sure ‘nuff,” Richie says, with that hint of his dad’s accent coming out that always makes Eddie smile, it even manages to draw a smile out of him when he’s in one of his melancholy episodes. “Not you, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Sometimes I wonder if whatever it is that’s got my mom all fucked up and whatever it was that had my dad all fucked up is just sort of sleeping up in my head.”

“Eddie…” Richie sits up, balancing back on his heels. “Come on, what’s got you thinking like this? You’re nothing like either of your parents.”

Eddie props himself up on his elbows. “How is that possible? How is it possible for someone to be literally nothing like either of their parents? That just isn’t the way it works,” he says. “Anyway, I barely knew my dad, so… For all we know…”

“I don’t…” Richie starts. Then he stops and thinks about it. Eddie gives him those eyes, big doe eyes, big cow eyes, those big brown pleading eyes that drive him crazy every single day. That have driven him crazy since he was nine years old. They make him want to say anything, anything at all to alleviate Eddie’s worries. “… I don’t know, Eddie, but I really don’t think you’re anything like them. You have to believe me.”

But Eddie does not to concede to Richie’s reassurance. He glances off to the side uncomfortably. “I feel like I’m dying here,” he says, finally. “In this town. County. State. Mountains. Living with my mom.”

“That’s why we gotta get out, Eds,” Richie says. Eddie groans at the use of the nickname _._ Richie lies down next to him—there’s barely enough room for them on the twin sized bed, but they always make it work. He reaches out and touches Eddie’s face, ghosting his fingertips over his nose, his forehead, his lips, his fluttering eyelids. If he doesn’t do this, he’ll lose his mind. He’ll explode. He’ll just cease to exist. That’s how he feels.

“I’m scared of leaving,” Eddie admits. He’s given this impression before, but this is his first time saying it out loud. “I’m terrified of what it’s going to be like. The people. Being far away from my mom. I know she’s awful, but she’s… my mom. Who’s going to take care of her? I don’t know, Richie, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. And we’re graduating soon, so now I have to think about it more than ever. Am I really going to settle for doing my gen ed at the fucking community college and then end up getting stuck here forever? Am I strong enough to just head out on my own?”

“We’ll do whatever it is you decide will be best,” Richie says. “It’s your call.”

“What about… you? What do you want to do?”

“I want to do whatever you want to do.”

Eddie makes a low, discontented noise and turns on his side away from Richie. “You should do what _you_ want to do, Richie,” he says quietly. “I’ve not applied anywhere. So I guess I’ve already made up my mind.”

“Then so have I,” Richie says. He touches Eddie’s back, just to let him know he’s there, drags his fingers over the fabric of Eddie’s shirt. “Nothing wrong with staying home for a couple years and knocking out gen ed classes at community college. It’s a financially responsible decision. You can, uh.” He pauses, a little nervous to say it. “You can move in. With us. My parents already told me they’re okay with me staying with them until I’m ready to leave town, as long as I’m working or in school.”

Eddie turns his head to glance back at Richie over his shoulder. “You really want me to do that,” he says. It isn’t phrased like a question. More like a statement of genuine disbelief. “You want me to live with you.”

“Yeah. We can, like… tell my parents about us, I don’t know. It’s time, I think. And I think they’ll be okay with it,” Richie says, not really able to read Eddie’s reaction clearly. The thing about Eddie is he’s so bad at hiding how he really feels. He wears his heart on his sleeve to his own detriment. But when it comes to _this_ topic, he retreats so deeply into his own head, Richie can’t make much sense of him.

“Maybe,” Eddie says, and faces back towards the wall. “What if you start hating me?”

“Eddie, why on earth would I ever start hating you?”

“Because! I’m the way I am. I’ll drive you crazy eventually.”

“We’ve known each other for, like… ten years, almost, Eddie, I think I have a pretty good idea of what you’re like at this point.” He can feel Eddie withdrawing from the conversation. It’s never a good idea to push him to talk about things once he reaches this point.

So Richie lets it go. They’re quiet for some time, so quiet that they can hear Maggie singing to herself in the kitchen. _Peaches in the summertime, apples in the fall, if I can’t get the girl I love, I don’t want none at all. Shady Grove, my little love, Shady Grove, I know…_

“Everything’s changing,” Eddie says.

And it is, too quickly. Stan is New York bound after graduation—Patty, too. Mike will be headed off to Berea and Bill was accepted to a number of fine universities, he just needs to take his pick. Ben is content with the options he has lined up, a good spread throughout Kentucky and East Tennessee. Though Beverly is, as she always has been, a bit more enigmatic with her intentions, she has made it clear she won’t be staying in the mountains any longer than she has to. Everything is changing. In a few short months, they’ll be spread out all over.

He continues, “I don’t want things to change. I want it to be like it was when we were kids, just a little while longer. And whether I leave or stay behind, I’ll never get that back.”

“I know,” Richie says, threading his fingers gently through Eddie’s hair. “I feel the same way. I had the best time with you guys. It feels like a dream when I look back on it. It was too good to be real.”

“I don’t think it could have been any better if we tried,” Eddie says. He’s crying, but trying to hide it. “Even when things were hard… We were always together, you know?”

“Well… Mike won’t be too far and I’m sure Bill will stick around the area for now. Ben and Beverly, I don’t know. And Stan.” Richie gets choked up at the thought of Stan’s imminent departure. New York. May as well be going to the opposite end of the earth.

“I miss him already.”

“He’s going to have the best time, though. You know?” Richie offers. A little sliver of optimism. “We’ll go visit. We’ll fly. On a plane.”

Eddie looks back over his shoulder, nose scrunched up. Slightest hint of tears in his eyes. “I’m scared of flying,” he says.

“Ah well, we’ll worry about that when we get there, Eddie,” Richie says, wiping at Eddie’s tears with his thumb. “We don’t have to worry about it today. Or even tomorrow.”

All the while, his mom is still singing, _wish I had a banjo string made of golden twine, every tune I’d play on it, I wish that girl was mine. Shady Grove, my little love, Shady Grove, I know…_

Beverly Marsh got suspended from school for fighting. That’s what everyone’s saying.

“What the fuck are you talking about,” Richie says when Stan delivers the news. They’re sitting in the grass off the side of the running track, tossing a hacky sack back and forth and waiting for Eddie to finish his off-season track and field practice.

“Beverly got suspended from school for fighting,” Stan repeats. “Fighting _Greta Keene_.”

“What the fuck! Why? Why did she do that? And more importantly, why wasn’t I there? I can’t believe she would do that without me!” Richie yells, throwing his hands in the air and letting the hacky sack fall to the ground with a soft thud. “She promised me… She promised me she wouldn’t kick Greta Keene’s ass without telling me first…”

“From what I hear, it was a very heated, very sudden scuffle,” Stan says. He looks around to make sure no one is within earshot. “Greta Keene told Beverly that she heard Bill has a beard. That beard, of course, being Beverly.”

Richie blinks.

“A _beeeeeeaaaaard_.”

“Oh holy mother of God,” Richie says. “I don’t understand. Am I missing something here?” He picks up the hacky sack and throws it at Stan with no warning. Stan catches it anyway.

“It would appear so,” Stan says.

“So was Beverly mad because someone accused her of being a beard when she’s not or was she mad because she is a beard and she’s trying to defend Bill’s honor?” Richie asks.

“Okay, Richie? I know that you’re happy living your life with your head shoved firmly up Eddie’s ass, but you need to take five seconds and pay attention to the people around you.”

Richie glowers at that, but he can’t argue with Stan’s point. Yes, okay, fine, maybe he has been a little wrapped up in Richie And Eddie Time lately. Maybe sometimes he’s completely dissociated from what’s going on with the people in his life. It isn’t that bad! It really isn’t that bad, Stan’s just being dramatic for no reason.

“Bill is gay,” Richie says, “is what I’m picking up. And he hasn’t told us? Or has he just not told me?”

“No, he hasn’t _told_ any of us. But it’s pretty much out,” Stan says quietly. He tosses the hacky sack and hits Richie square in the nose. “I mean, Beverly knows, obviously. It probably would have served Bill better if she hadn’t flown off the handle, but she did. The janitor had to come by and sweep Greta’s hair up after the fight was over. Blood got on one of the bathroom stalls. That’s what Patty was telling me.”

“Oh,” Richie says. He laughs. “That’s pretty cool.”

Stan laughs, too. “Yeah, it is. Fuck yeah, Bev.”

“What should we do? How do we approach this with Bill?” Richie asks.

“I don’t know.”

“You’re supposed to know everything!” Richie tries another surprise throw at Stan and still fails to get a hit in. “Fucking catlike reflexes over here.”

“I figure we could get to Beverly first,” Stan says, tossing the hacky sack back and forth in his hands. “But the question is, do we do this as one cohesive unit? Or do we keep it lowkey? We’re… growing up now, you know? We can’t just run all crazy-like into every situation like we did when we were kids. Especially not for something as sensitive as this.”

“Then how about me and you go talk to Beverly,” Richie says.

“Just me and you? Not Eddie?”

Richie nods.

“Okay, how about this. You and I go pick up Beverly… and _Eddie_ goes and talks to Bill first. You know Bill is still all soft around Eddie,” Stan says. “And we’ll do this… calmly, like mature and rational adults. No one gets overwhelmed or anything. And we handle this like the grownups we are.”

“Uh,” Richie says.

Stan sighs. “Just let me do most of the talking.”

**+**

Richie and Stan pick Beverly up from her house in the holler. The sound of her father’s belligerent screaming follows her out the front door and is cut off abruptly as she slams it with full force behind her. She’s frowning worse than Richie has ever seen her frown before, overnight bag slung over her shoulder indicating that she has no plans of going home tonight. She climbs in the backseat wordlessly and the three of them wait for one another to start the conversation as Richie cautiously backs down the perilously curvy, unpaved road.

“Beverly…” Stan starts. “Is everything okay?”

“No,” she snaps.

“Bev, come on, this isn’t like you.”

“I know! I know it isn’t. And I feel horrible.”

Once Richie reaches the mouth of the holler, he peels out so quickly it shakes them around in their seats like an old roller coaster. He starts across town towards the Denbrough residence.

“Bill’s gonna hate me,” Beverly mumbles, covering her face with her hands.

“I don’t think you could do anything to make Bill hate you,” Stan says, angling around in the passenger to look back at her. She pointedly refuses to meet his gaze.

Riche’s heart breaks at the sight of her in the rearview mirror. This is Beverly in a true moment of weakness and vulnerability. This is Beverly needing to allow herself to accept the comfort and concern of her friends, and she’s going to go down kicking and screaming the whole way.

It’s a short drive to Bill’s house. Once they get out of the car, they see Bill and Eddie sitting together on the porch swing. The early winter breeze has Richie shivering and shoving his hands deep down into his coat pockets. “Why are you guys out here?” he asks. “It’s freezing.”

“Eddie was h-h-hot from his practice,” Bill says. He keeps the swing swaying back and forth with the light press of his foot against the porch. Next to him sits Eddie, cross-legged and swallowed up in an oversized hoodie of Richie’s. Neither give off the impression that they have been having a particularly unpleasant conversation. 

“Bill… I’m sorry,” Beverly says. She’s sitting on the top porch step, facing away from everyone. Richie and Stan sit in the matching iron rocking chairs that are angled to face the swing on the opposite end of the porch.

“There’s n-n-nothing to be sorry for, Beverly,” Bill says. If only Beverly would turn around and see that Bill is giving her that look, that soft, tender expression he has always reserved just for her. Richie always assumed it was just his quiet expression of young love—it still is, he supposes, just not the kind of love everyone thought it was. “I think it was b-b-bound to happen eventually.”

“Well, I definitely… expedited the process,” Beverly says, grabbing at her jacket and pulling it tightly against herself.

“I don’t mean to interrupt, but would it be possible for us to get a recap of what exactly has been going on? Like… you can just SparkNotes that shit if you want to,” Richie says, still feeling infuriatingly out of the loop. He feels hurt knowing that Beverly has been keeping something from him for years, but it isn’t like they ever really sat down and promised to tell each other anything and everything out of obligation, so he can’t be too upset at her.

She had been the first person he told about that day at the Tabernacle. She untangled and loosened up the knots of Richie’s emotions. They talked it out for hours. Never once during that conversation had she indicated that she would want anyone to do the same for her.

Beverly takes a deep breath. “Sure,” she exhales. “Yeah. When we were fourteen, Bill and I decided to be… boyfriend and girlfriend, or whatever. Like whatever fourteen-year-olds do when they like each other. We would, like, ride our bikes to Dairy Hut and share a sundae! And watch TV together after school! Things like that. But then eventually it became obvious that we were just kind of hanging out? Platonically? Which was fine! So around the time we were sixteen… we just kind of talked it out.” She turns to Bill, giving him a look that says she wants him to take the stage.

“I t-told her that I just didn’t think I liked her that way, but I was c-c-confused. And there was s-s-someone… And she said okay, and that if I still n-needed for her to. Cover f-f-for me, I guess. Then she would d-do it for as long as I needed,” Bill says.

A gust of wind gets the wind chime singing. The sky is turning dark, a bitter cold mountain night pulling itself over them like a blanket. The sun goes down sickeningly early in the wintertime, always leaving Richie with this empty feeling, aching for their long summer days. He’s not the biggest fan of winter.

“Beverly, you gave me f-f-four years of your life. I d-d-don’t care what h-happens from here on out. I’ve never known k-kindness like that and that’s enough to keep me going for now. Okay?”

“Anyone would have done it,” Beverly sniffs.

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Stan says, “but maybe this isn’t as bad as it seems? I mean, we’re almost done with high school, we can just… leave and put people like Greta Keene behind us. Right?”

“I like to think so. But it’s going to be a long six months,” Beverly says—hopeless is how she sounds. That isn’t like her. It’s scary to hear.

“We’ll get through it like we always have. What’s different, really?” Richie looks at Eddie, who is wearing an indiscernible expression on his face and has been quiet since Richie, Beverly, and Stan joined the conversation.

It’s a sore subject for him, Richie knows that. The first time the word _boyfriends_ came up between them, it spearheaded a series of long, arduous conversations about when and how to tell the other Losers, and what if other people found out? And what if Eddie’s mom found out? What would people at school say?

It had made Richie feel a little sore as well, if he was being honest, that Eddie was seemingly willing to take their feelings for one another to the grave with him, hesitant to tell even their closest friends. And Bill had lived under the protection of Beverly all the while. Everyone has their own way of coping with these things.

In the end, Richie and Eddie told the others in an organic way—no big group meeting or dramatic declarations. There was very little teasing about _what took you so long_? And then it was done. Nothing really changed. They’ve been attached at the hip since they were in the second grade. And anything that anyone else in this tiny, judgmental town could say about them has already been said.

Richie’s mom has this old record of songs from some musical he can’t remember the name of. She likes the song by the two star-crossed lovers who can’t be seen together because of their stations in the court of a strict king. She likes it so much that she always goes and turns the needle back to listen to it again and again. Richie doesn’t know what it’s called, but he remembers how it goes. _Alone in our secret together we sigh for one smiling day to be free, to kiss in the sunlight and say to the sky: behold and believe what you see. Behold how my lover loves me._ That struck a chord in him at a young age. It still does. Something about the comfort of knowing nothing he’s feeling is new. Other people have felt like they’d burst at the seams from a love unrecognized and unaccepted by others.

Eddie finally speaks, facing Bill with that magnetic force that always pulls group conversations in to just the two of them. Like no one else is there. Ever since they were kids. “Can I ask you something? And you won’t be mad at me,” he says.

“I could n-n-never be mad at you,” Bill says gently.

“Is it Mikey?” Eddie asks.

Bill relinquishes his answer easily. “It is.” Louder, he says, “It is Mikey. Since w-w-we were sixteen.”

Richie lets out a low whistle. “Wow. 2002 was a really gay year for all of us,” he says.

This gets Beverly to laugh. “I love you guys so much,” she says, ending it with a small sigh.

After talking for a little while longer—about happier things, Bill’s options for university and the upcoming football game—Stan asks Richie to take him home so he can do homework. They tease him for a bit, but he probably just wants to get home and talk to Patty on the phone for a couple of hours, like he does every night before bed.

“You coming, Bev?” Richie asks.

She shakes her head. “Nope, gonna stay with my man for a while,” she says. She’s taken Eddie’s place on the porch swing, head resting on Bill’s shoulder. They look like brother and sister. “I’ll be home a little later. I don’t think my dad would take to well to seeing me tonight, so.”

Once Stan is dropped off at home, Richie heads in the direction of Eddie’s house, stopping in the parking lot of the Methodist church so they can talk for a bit without Sonia peeking at them through the blinds. Richie turns the engine off to save gas which leaves them both shivering within a few minutes.

“It makes sense,” Eddie says.

“Hmm?”

“It makes sense. Bill and Mike. It’s always made sense,” he says.

Richie thinks back on it. That night when they were twelve and Bill and Mike stayed up late to play with the lightning bugs. The way Bill held his hands so gently around Mike’s to marvel at the tiny green fluorescent lights. The quiet, private conversations they shared. Maybe Richie saw it happen. You plant a seed and you tend to the garden and love grows.

He asks Eddie, “Does it make you feel bad that they didn’t tell us?”

Eddie shakes his head and gives a small shrug. “No. Not really. People have to do things in their own time,” he says. Maybe it’s just one of those fundamental, diametric differences between the two of them. Richie’s development was informed by parents with whom he has never had to hide much. Eddie has spent a lot of his life keeping things secret from his mother and having major things kept secret from him. They see things differently. They hold on to things with a different urgency.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Richie says. He reaches over to move Eddie’s hair out of his eyes. “I can’t believe you agreed to go straight to Bill’s after practice when you were all sweaty and gross.”

“I know. I feel fucking disgusting.”

“When I was a kid…” Richie has always wondered when he would tell Eddie about this. The biggest source of his childhood despair, so stupidly pointless in retrospect. Now’s a good time, he supposes. “I was so jealous of Bill when I was a kid. I felt like you were always looking at him. Trailing after him. Like, I would literally go home and cry about it. I was so fucking stupid.”

Eddie lets out a low, incredulous laugh. “Seriously? That’s ridiculous.”

“Well, you know what they say. Hindsight’s twenty-twenty or whatever,” Richie says. He knows Eddie will have a conniption fit if he tries to touch his post-practice hair anymore, so he settles for taking the drawstring of his hoodie and twisting it around his fingers. A nervous habit more powerful than Adderall, the constant need to keep his hands busy and the undeniable pull towards any part of Eddie.

“Remember when you saved me that day I almost fell off of the tree?” Eddie asks.

“What? You mean the day I thought you were literally going to kill me because I stepped away for thirty seconds to look for a bird? We remember things very differently.”

“Noooo,” Eddie says, laughing. He grabs Richie’s hand that is toying anxiously with the drawstring, holds it up to his cheek and leans in slightly. “I mean, yes. I was really fucking mad at you. But you came back as soon as I called your name. It was, like, instant.”

“You would have been fine if you fell.”

“I know. But you didn’t let me fall. And that’s what I remember the most.”

“God,” Richie sighs. He runs his thumb over the darkened skin under Eddie’s eye. Perpetual dark circles since middle school. His mom tried everything she could to get rid of them. “That was so long ago. I loved you before I even knew what that meant.”

The arrival of a new pair of headlights turning the corner means that Richie has to withdraw his hand, turn on the car, and drop Eddie off at his house. Lord knows what would become of them if the wrong person saw them together outside of a church of all places.

Once he reaches the front door, Eddie always turns back to give Richie one last wave. Sonia weeps and wails wondering where her Eddie-bear has been all night. And Richie waits until he sees Eddie’s light turn on, glowing softly from his bedroom window, before he drives back home.

“Can’t fucking believe we got put on booze duty,” Beverly says. She kicks a rock as far as it will go. Then she kicks another. Because she’s mad. Of course now that the act of providing enough booze to get the entire gang reasonably buzzed is nigh impossible, it’s ol’ Beverly and Benny’s turn.

“I know, and it’s so hard now that my mom caught on to us,” Ben says. “Everyone else has pulled through, though. Now it’s our turn.” He’s sitting on the hood of his car, watching as Beverly continues kicking tiny rocks around the driveway.

“We only have one option, you know,” Beverly says. She looks over her shoulder to make sure Arlene isn’t anywhere close.

“What is it?” Ben asks, noting her caution and barely speaking above a whisper.

“We have to go to a bootlegger.”

“What!” Ben screams.

“Shhhhh, shhhhh! We don’t have any other options! My dad would take the switch to me if he caught me taking any of his booze, Lord almighty, he drives God knows where to buy that shit. Your mom has started setting an elaborate series of traps to keep us out of the liquor cabinet. We can’t risk driving to another county when I’m not sure if I could rely on my womanly charms to get someone to check us out with no IDs. So we’re going to have to go… to a bootlegger.”

“Oh God,” Ben says. “Oh I’m gonna be sick. Who?”

“Well… Miss Meg Barley got saved a couple years back so she’s not bootlegging anymore. But I know Victor Criss’s dad still does,” Beverly says.

“Victor Criss!” Ben whispers aggressively.

“Yes! Ben, seriously, it’s okay,” Beverly also whispers aggressively. “The Bowers gang is no more, Victor Criss doesn’t even hang out with Hockstetter or any of those other guys anymore. And his dad has, like, no morals so he’s not gonna care about us being high schoolers.”

“We’re not gonna get in trouble?”

“Lord no! Ben, don’t worry about it. Trust me. Can you trust me?”

Ben gives her a hesitant nod.

“That’s not inspiring confidence, Benny, baby! Can you _trust_ me!”

“Yes,” Ben says. “Yes! I can! I trust you, Beverly!”

“Okay good, let’s go. How much money do you have? I have like ten bucks.”

“Uh,” Ben says, reaching into his pocket and handing a few crumpled bills over to Beverly. She shoves them in her back pocket. “That’s about twenty bucks.”

“It’ll do. Are you ready?”

“I… Yeah. Yes, I’m ready.” Ben slides off the hood of the car and unlocks the driver side door. He climbs in, starts the engine, and unlocks the passenger door for Beverly. “You know how to get to his house?” he asks as she slides in and immediately sets the heater to surface of the sun level.

“Yeah, just start driving and I’ll lead you there,” she says.

Ben pulls out of the driveway and sets off down the road past the Denbrough residence, past the Tozier residence, a straight shot out of the city limits. Once you hit the edge of town you can either go right and head straight to Virginia or you can head left and hit any number of tiny communities off the side of the road, hidden back in shady, sweeping hills at the base of the mountains.

“Just go left,” Beverly says, “and I’ll tell you when to turn off the highway.”

They drive for quite some time, Beverly sitting comfortably with her feet resting on the dashboard, playing with her hair and humming along with the radio. Ben and Beverly share a love for good, old-fashioned pop music, so they always enjoy going on drives together and listening to the 80s, 90s and today station.

“George Michael,” Ben says. “Love of my mom’s life. The only man she would consider marrying after my dad passed.”

“She knows, right?” Beverly asks, thoroughly amused.

“Oh yes. But love is transcendent, that’s what she told me. She has the purest heart of anyone I’ve ever known in my life,” Ben says. “If George Michael walked into our house right now, on this very day, and asked her to run away with him… we would never see her again.”

“ _That’s all I wanted… but sometimes love can be mistaken for a crime…_ ” Beverly sings along under her breath. “This song has always creeped me out, but maybe it’s just because I have a shitty dad? I really don’t want to hear dad references in music.”

“No, I think it’s a pretty creepy song. Maybe we’ll get it when we’re older, I don’t know,” Ben says. “Like… _I will be your father figure_? _Put your tiny hand in mine_? That’s weird, I don’t like that.”

“That guy that we learned about in psych class? Freud? This is what he was talking about. This song.”

“George Michael predates Sigmund Freud is what you’re saying.”

“Yes, I’m actually saying that Sigmund Freud stole his ideas from this song by George Michael.”

Beverly’s funny. There’s a lot of things Ben likes about Beverly. She’s beautiful, she’s brave, she’s a fierce defender of all of her friends. And she’s just so effortlessly funny. Ben never laughs as much as he does when it’s just him and Beverly. When he was a little kid writing goofy love poems in his journal before bed, he never imagined that one day Beverly Marsh would be sitting in his car going to buy a gallon of moonshine with him.

Or that he would ever be in a position where he would be buying a gallon of moonshine, period, but that’s not the point. The point is, he loves the way he feels when he’s with her.

“I have one concern,” Beverly says. “Mr. Criss surely sells alcohol to my dad. I wonder if he’s gonna rat me out?”

“Oh, I hadn’t thought about that. Should we…?”

“Hmmmm, nah. No, it’s fine. He’s about to make thirty American dollars off of us, I doubt he’s gonna care.”

“Well,” Ben says. He pauses to clear his throat. “Maybe… you could stay out in the car and I could go in myself and get… the uh… the moonshine.”

“Oh, would you? You’d do that for me?” Beverly asks, her eyes widening like she’s just heard the best news of her life. “That’s so kind of you, Ben, I’d really ‘ppreciate it.” She always lets her accent slip out a little bit when she’s really laying down gratitude towards someone.

“Sure, Bev, absolutely. Just as long as you promise I won’t die.”

“No, no, no, not at all. Okay, do you see that little gravel road up there to the right? You’re gonna take that road and drive all the way to the far end. It’s a trailer with green skirting around the side, just park right out front,” Beverly says. She points ahead to the road in question, nearly fully obscured by overgrown grass and heavy tree limbs that hit the windshield as Ben carefully drives through.

Roads like this look more like one long driveway. Beverly explained that a lot of times, multiple branches of the same family tree live back in places like this. The land belongs to some old patriarch and every son, daughter, grandson, granddaughter, and so on and so forth will set up a trailer. Almost like a tiny little town all on their own.

Ben drives up towards the trailer with the green skirting. He can spot Victor Criss whittling away at a piece of wood with a knife sitting on the elevated, unfinished porch built up against the side of the trailer. Victor cranes his neck to try and look in the car and gives Ben and Beverly a strange look. He stands up and descends the steps as Ben puts the car in park and rolls down the window.

“Huh,” he says. “Hanscom? And Beverly Marsh?”

“Shit,” Beverly whispers to herself. “Well, I was hoping no one would see me here,” she says, undoing her seatbelt and leaning over Ben to stick her head out the open window. “We’re wantin’ some moonshine. Would your pa sell us some? And not tell my daddy?”

“Eh, don’t worry about it, if you want me to take your money in I can grab a gallon. I won’t tell him it’s you’ouns or nothin’,” Victor offers. Ben is alarmed at how utterly harmless he seems. A far cry from the guy who once kicked Richie in the back so hard he then threw up in the middle of a school assembly.

“That’s mighty kind of you, Victor,” Beverly says, and she hands over the money in her pocket. “That’s about thirty, that good?”

“Sho ‘nuff. This’ll have ya’ll walkin’ on a slant in no time, so take it easy,” Victor says, pocketing the money. He excuses himself, climbs the wobbly stairs up to the porch and disappears inside the trailer.

“Wow… he seems like a totally different person,” Ben says, amazed. He turns to Beverly. “… Hey, Bev. Don’t take this the wrong way, but it’s funny how your accent always comes out more when you’re talking to certain people. Maybe funny isn’t the right word… I don’t know, it’s kind of cute. I guess.” Lord, he said it, didn’t he? He said Beverly is _cute_. What if she runs away screaming?

Beverly laughs and her cheeks turn a soft shade of pink. She sits back down in her seat once she realizes she’s still leaning over Ben. “Yeah, sometimes I try to put it away. Maybe practicing for when I don’t live here anymore. I want to live in Virginia, the cool part of Virginia, you know? They’ll think I talk like some hillbilly if I run around sounding like this.”

“I like the way you talk,” Ben says. “It’s unique. There’s nothing wrong with it.”

“Huh,” Beverly says, and she leaves it at that.

Victor returns shortly with a plastic water jug and passes it to Ben through the window. “Test it out,” he says with a lopsided smile. 

Beverly grabs the jug and opens it, holding it up to her nose. She takes a tiny sip. “Whew! Shit fire,” she coughs. “Well, thanks again, Victor. We do appreciate it.”

“It ain’t no thing. Just get outta here before my pa sees you,” Victor says with a short wave. “You can pull around in the grass so you don’t have to back out.”

Ben doesn’t have to be told twice. He rolls up his window and carefully maneuvers his car through the dewy grass along the downward slope of the hill. He straightens the car back out once he makes it on the gravel road and then they’re back out on the highway.

“Not so bad, huh?” Beverly asks, grinning ear to ear.

“I definitely thought I’d be looking up the barrel of a shotgun by this time, so. Yeah, not so bad,” Ben says. Beverly turns up the radio just in time for _Love is a Battlefield_ and the two of them make their way back to town.

**+**

“Rules,” Stan says.

“Oh my _God_ , shut up. Always talking about rules,” Richie yells at him from across the room like a heckler at a comedy show. “We know, we know. It’s your parents’ basement. We can’t go upstairs or whatever. We have to piss out the window. We know!”

Stan spins around to face where Richie is laying comfortably on the recently retired-to-the-basement loveseat with his gangly limbs all spread out and one arm wrapped around Eddie’s shoulders. “Richie. The last time we drank here. You started a _fire_ ,” he says emphatically.

“Holy shit. I forgot about that!” Richie laughs.

“Rules,” Eddie says, elbowing Richie in the side and then gesturing for Stan to continue.

“Thank you, I’m glad one of you has a functioning frontal fucking lobe. My only rule is basically that you can’t light shit on fire! Am I asking for so much?”

“That’s a tough one, Staniel, I don’t know…” Richie says with an exaggerated frown.

“Fuuu _uuuucking_ —” Stan is cut off by the sound of knocking on the basement door that leads outside. “I hope that’s Ben and Bev with the alcohol because I’m already going crazy,” he says, undoing the three deadbolts and opening the door.

It’s Bill and Mike. “Hi,” Bill says, shoving a plastic bag full of candy to Stan’s chest.

Stan takes the bag in his hands and looks inside. “This is mostly candy apple suckers…”

“I like c-c-candy apple suckers,” Bill says.

Mike hands over a bag as well, which is filled with a more diverse selection of snacks. “Don’t worry, Stan. You know I’ve got you.”

“Thank you, Mike,” Stan says. He ushers the two of them in and closes the door behind them, leaving the deadbolts unlocked for when Ben and Beverly arrive. “I was just telling these two stupid idiots that we’re not allowed to light anything on fire.”

Mike winces. “Don’t worry, I’ll make sure they walk the line.”

“Especially Eddie,” Richie says, “the hooligan.”

“I appreciate it, Michael, _thank you_. As far as other rules go. I would prefer if no one went upstairs except to use the bathroom, but my parents are out of town so I guess it doesn’t really matter just… don’t mess with my mom’s puzzle… Please.” Stan looks over at Richie pleadingly. “ _Please_.”

Richie holds his hands up to feign an air of innocence. “We still don’t know if that was me.”

“It was you,” Stan, Mike, Bill, and Eddie say in unison.

“Okay, fine. It was me. In my defense, I was extremely drunk. And I’m still very sorry.”

“Mr. Sprinkles took the fall for you,” Stan says, scowling.

The door opens and Beverly proudly presents their spoils of war while Ben follows sheepishly behind her. “We did it!” she shouts exuberantly.

“Is that fucking moonshine?” Eddie balks. “From where?”

“From Mr. Criss!”

“You drove all the way out to Criss Holler?!” Stan asks, taking the jug from Beverly and unscrewing the lid. He sniffs it. “This is going to peel the paint off the fucking walls… Holy shit, you guys.”

Beverly takes off her sweater and kicks her winter boots off, leaving her just in her flowing knee length dress and stockings. She collapses on one of the two blow-up mattresses on the floor and throws her arms out dramatically. “Yes, we went all the way to Criss Holler for you, our dear friends.”

Bill takes the jug from Stan and takes a small sip. “That’s d-d-disgusting,” he says, passing it to Mike. Mike gives it a good sniff and promptly holds it as far away from his face as he can.

“Did you guys know that Victor Criss is, like… normal now?” Ben asks, taking off his shoes and setting them neatly by the door. He takes off his overcoat and hangs it up on the row of hooks on the wall instead of throwing it on the ground like Beverly’s sweater, and then locks the deadbolts. Richie and Eddie make room for him on the loveseat and he sits down next to them. 

“Seems like after Bowers went to jail, his whole gang parted ways,” Stan says. He grabs the moonshine again and considers giving it a taste, unwilling to admit that he’s actually a little scared. His parents aren’t big on drinking—living in a dry county suits their lifestyle just fine, so they most certainly have never brought moonshine into the house before.

Bill sits down beside Beverly and pats her on the head. “You’re weren’t w-w-worried about your dad finding out?” he asks.

“Nope, Victor took the cash in and said not to worry ‘bout it,” Beverly replies, rolling up against Bill’s leg like she’s a puppy.

“What power did Henry Bowers have over those guys?” Mike wonders, falling onto the same inflatable mattress as Bill and Beverly. He rolls up to Bill’s other side, using his leg like a pillow. “What compels people to just follow a guy like that around to do his bidding? You know?”

“To be fair, Patrick Hockstetter is still a mess,” Richie says. “My mom heard at the grocery store that he stole the copper wire out of Mr. Keene’s garage.”

“Oh… that’s peak redneck, what the fuck,” Eddie laughs. “That’s where you go when you can’t steal the change from your kid brother’s piggybank anymore or whatever.”

“My uncle totally did that to me,” Beverly says. “I had like twenty bucks in quarters I’d been saving and he came to visit and then it was gone. My own uncle. Dad’s side, of course.”

Ben gasps. “That’s horrible! People will do that to their own family?”

“Benny,” Richie says, nudging Ben with his foot. “I love that you’ve lived your entire life without some aimless hillbilly relative coming to your house and rummaging through the drawers for loose change or shit to pawn off for a buck.”

“Wow,” Ben whispers. “You’re right, that’s never happened to me at all. I don’t think anyone in my family is like that.”

Stan grabs the stack of red Solo cups on the old ping pong table that’s been shoved off in the corner of the basement for as long as the Losers have been using it as a weekend hangout spot and distributes them to everyone with one hand, jug of moonshine held in the other. “We can’t be making fun of rednecks and hillbillies when we’re about to drink moonshine straight from the holler,” he says, circling back around and pouring everyone a modest amount of the drink.

“I’m scared,” Mike says.

“Don’t they have to get rats out of the mash when they make this stuff?” Eddie asks.

“No,” Beverly says, a little too urgently for Eddie’s taste.

“You have no idea. You’ve never made moonshine. How would you know?”

“Well, clearly they’re doing something right since this is such an important and longstanding Appalachian tradition, Eds,” Richie says. He holds the mouth of his cup to his nose and sniffs. “This is going to hurt.”

“Ohhh, y’all are such babies,” Beverly says, sitting upright so she can comfortably drink. “I’m gonna throw the whole thing back. I already took a sip earlier because I’m not a pussy.”

“I will give you fifty fucking dollars if you throw that whole cup of moonshine back,” Richie says. “I’ll bet you can’t do it.”

Beverly stares him down. She’s never been one who can easily turn down a challenge. “Okay,” she says. “Fine, I’ll do it. Easy as pie.” And she does. And then she proceeds to spit out the entire contents of her cup all over Richie, Eddie, and Ben.

“Beverly!” Eddie cries, equal parts disgusted and amused. “Beverly, what the fuck?”

Richie is rendered unable to speak for how hard he’s laughing. He slides off of the couch and down to the floor on his knees, grabbing Beverly by the shoulders. “I love you so fucking much, you crazy son of a bitch,” he wheezes.

“Oh my God,” Beverly gasps. “That was disgusting.” She grabs Richie’s face and smushes his cheeks. “I love you too, you bring out the worst in me.”

Ben uses the sleeve of his shirt to wipe the moonshine off of his face. He turns to Eddie and wipes the worst of the moonshine off his face as well. “Some of it got in my mouth. That’s really bad.”

Everyone is laughing and gradually gaining the courage to try the moonshine themselves. It’s met with varying levels of disgust. Stan takes tiny sips of his while he sets up the old box TV so they can watch a movie.

“Horrible,” he says, letting out a raspy cough. “Burns all the way down. Tastes like rubbing alcohol. What are we watching first?”

“Something I’ve never seen,” Beverly says. “You said it’s mostly horror movies, right? Show me something iconic. I only ever watch horror movies with you guys since my parents think they’re satanic and all. They went through a fundie kick a few years ago.”

“Oh, we have a ton of iconic shit in here,” Stan says, fumbling through the plastic tub full of old VHS tapes sitting underneath the old, outdated television set and its final resting place, an aged, water-stained coffee table. 

Everything in the basement of the beautiful Uris home is old and damaged by time and excessive use, offered up by Andrea for the entertainment purposes of her dear son and his friends. She often talks about all the plans she has for the basement after Stan goes off to college, but she’s the one always going out of her way to send down old furniture items that will make it more comfortable for the kids. If she and Stan’s father are aware of the illicit underage drinking, they haven’t said anything.

“ _The Texas Chainsaw Massacre_?” Stan offers. Everyone votes yes, so Stan puts the tape in the VCR and rewinds it to the beginning. “I know my mom watched this last because she never, _ever_ rewinds VHS tapes. Ever.”

“You sound like my grandmother,” Mike says, stifling a laugh. He angles his cup to take another small sip of moonshine, unwilling to move from where he has his head resting on Bill’s leg. “Just an old angry mamaw drinking moonshine and complaining.”

Richie is standing over Eddie, using the sleeve of his sweater to soak up any excess moonshine from his hair. “Are we, like, reaching our redneck apex tonight?” he asks. “Is this some profoundly spiritual experience we’re about to have?” Once he’s finished making sure Eddie is dry of all moonshine, he kisses him on the forehead. “All good, Eddie Spaghetti.”

Beverly makes an exaggerated puking noise at this tender display of affection as she pours herself another cup of moonshine. Richie flips her off. She returns the favor and takes cautious, careful sips of her drink. “A redneck rite of passage,” she says, gagging for real this time.

“It’s like corn and… yeah, rubbing alcohol,” Ben says.

“He probably makes it in a fucking car radiator and _rats_ get in there, I _know_ rats get in there because I read something about rats and moonshine,” Eddie says, as if he hasn’t already ingested some of the rat and corn mixture.

Richie squeezes into the corner of the loveseat beside him, throwing his legs over Eddie’s lap. “I promise there’s no rats, babe,” he says. He tries to take a decent swig to inspire some confidence and barely gets it down. “God almighty,” he heaves.

“You can’t promise that, you didn’t see him make it!”

“Yeah, but Mr. Criss is a totally reputable shiner. My parents have bought moonshine from Mr. Criss,” Richie says, which makes everyone laugh. “I know, ol’ Mags and Wents don’t seem like the moonshine type! But even they like to get a little crazy now and again!”

“My p-p-parents have bought from him too,” Bill says. He’s taking the smallest sips imaginable, barely parting his lips over the rim of the cup. “I’m sure he doesn’t m-m-make it in a car radiator, Eddie.”

Stan hits play on the movie, turns down the lights, and takes the second unoccupied inflatable mattress for himself. “Oh, Patty wanted me to let you guys know she really wanted to come over, but she got called in to work last minute,” he says.

“Patty isn’t real,” Richie says. “I’ve never hung out with her before.”

“You totally have!” Stan yells.

“I have,” Eddie says in Stan’s defense.

“Thank you, Eddie.”

“Eddie, shhhh, she isn’t real. We’ve been humoring him for years now and it’s time for an intervention.”

“You stupid idiots, shut up,” Beverly says, leaning over and smacking Richie’s leg. “Stop teasin’ Stan, his girlfriend has a robust social life. We’re just a bunch of weirdos who only hang out with each other.”

“Exactly,” Stan says. “I mean, I’m not a weirdo, I hang out with other people besides you guys.”

“Like who?” Richie asks indignantly. “I would like to know! I would like to meet them!”

“… Patty,” Stan mumbles, defeated. “Okay, okay, we really need to shut up, the movie’s starting.”

They fall silent except for the occasional cough and groan in response to a harsh sip of moonshine. Richie, who has seen this movie approximately fifty times in his life, is currently preoccupied with other things. One being the gentle curl of Eddie’s hair where he still hasn’t gotten it cut. Very important. Second is the fact that Ben can’t stop making eyes at Beverly. As in he literally appears to be physically and emotionally unable to stop. So Richie shifts his position, pulls his legs off of Eddie’s lap and manhandles Eddie closer to him. This leaves a significant section of empty loveseat between Eddie and Ben.

“Hey Bev,” Richie says, “Eddie’s cold and he wants you to come up here and snuggle with him. Right, Eddie?”

“What—” Eddie starts.

“You know Eddie, low iron, always cold.”

“Right…?” Eddie says.

“Hmm? Oh, Eddie, of course!” Beverly moves from the inflatable mattress up into the loveseat, situated comfortably between Eddie and Ben. “Good, we’ve got a love nest going on up here,” she says, leaning up against Eddie and resting her chin on his shoulder.

“Uh, thank you,” Eddie says, confused.

Ben and Richie make eye contact behind Eddie and Beverly’s heads but both are communicating sentiments the other is not capable of properly interpreting, so they turn back to the movie.

Partway through the movie, Beverly points to the television with the hand that is holding her mostly empty cup and says, “Can I just say… that there’s something about horror movies and slasher movies that bothers me and I can’t quite put my finger on it. But look at it, look at how… it’s this beautiful girl and she’s hanging off of a meat hook.”

“A meat hook,” Mike says, opening his third candy apple sucker of the evening. “A meat hook, I think I see what you’re saying, it’s… dehumanizing, right?”

“Yes! Yes, Mike!” Beverly shouts, stirring in her seat so much that she’s now leaning on Ben more than Eddie.

“Isn’t the point,” Stan says, rolled over on his back, hanging off of his mattress and watching the movie upside down, “that it’s dehumanizing, like are we really expecting this weird murder family to… humanize? Their victims?”

“No, no, no that’s not what I mean. I mean… it’s dehumanizing her to the audience?”

“I feel like the most iconic horror movie victims are all women. There has to be a reason for that,” Eddie says thoughtfully.

“I actually was reading s-s-something about this,” Bill says. “It said that the horror genre d-d-developed during this t-time in response to the women’s lib movement.”

“You sound like some pretentious college dweeb,” Richie says, snorting into his cup.

“So basically,” Beverly says, “and I’m just talking, I’m just saying words. It’s like women are… being punished? You know? Help me out here, Ben.”

“Maybe it’s like people started making all of these movies about women being violently murdered to punish women onscreen for the feminist movement or something like that,” Ben says.

“Yes! Exactly, that’s exactly what I’m trying to say. Like it’s supposed to be… titillating! It’s supposed to be titillating when these beautiful sexy young girls are murdered,” Beverly says.

“That’s a really interesting point, Beverly,” Ben says. “I’d never thought about it like that before. That definitely puts a new perspective on all of these classic horror movies. Isn’t it weird to think about how we are just exposed to all different kinds of media that mold our perception of reality and we aren’t even conscious of it?”

Beverly nods. “Mmmhmm, and we mostly don’t question the things we see,” she says. 

“I want more _moonshine_ ,” Richie interjects, holding out his cup. Stan passes the jug to Mike, who passes it to Bill, who passes it to Richie. “I’m just gonna drink it right out the jug, is that okay?”

“You’re fucking disgusting,” Eddie says in abject horror as Richie opens the jug and takes an impressive swig. He politely declines when Richie offers the jug to him.

“You can’t hog it,” Beverly says, reaching over Eddie and grabbing the jug out of Richie’s hand so she can refill her cup. “Ben, are you good?”

“I could have a little more.”

They all top off their drinks, pass some snacks around, and fall back into silence as their happy veil of drunkenness has them feeling loose and warm and content. Once the movie reaches its end, Beverly and Ben are curled up close together talking excitedly about the final scene of the movie, the heroine laughing triumphantly as she escapes certain brutal death. Is it empowering? Is it making a statement about what type of woman deserves to survive?

“What,” Stan says slowly, drunk, “should I put on next.”

“ _Rosemary’s Baby_ ,” Richie suggests.

“No, I don’t want to see any religious horror, I’ll have an episode,” Eddie says. Richie opens his mouth like he’s raring to fight about it, but Eddie’s already starting to get all sleepy-drunk, playing with Richie’s hair and resting his full body weight against Richie without any of his usual uptight inhibition, so. Richie’s willing to let it go, just this once.

Mike suggests _Suspiria_. Bill suggests _Sleepaway Camp_. Stan crawls on all fours over to the box of VHS tape and rummages through their options. “ _The Blair Witch Project_ ,” he says.

They all agree, except for Ben and Beverly who are in their own little world of drunken academic film analysis, so they don’t count. Stan puts the tape in the VCR and presses play, crawling back to his mattress and resuming his previous position of watching the television upside down.

Halfway through the movie, everyone decides that they are bored and tired. Their conversations die out one by one. Beverly has fallen asleep on Ben’s shoulder, one arm wrapped around his middle, and he looks like he is experiencing the resurrection of Jesus Christ with the way his face is filled with such reverent love.

Richie wants to say that he gets it, because that’s how he feels when he looks at Eddie, but he has more or less always had that understanding with Ben, so it goes without saying. Bill is asleep with his head in Mike’s lap. Mike runs his fingers through Bill’s hair and stares lazily at the television.

The next to go is Stan, still hanging off of the mattress, arm over his eyes to block out the light from the television screen. He’s snoring lightly—Eddie diagnosed him with a deviated septum and potential sleep apnea when they were thirteen years old.

Eddie sits somewhere between asleep and awake, head resting in the crook of Richie’s neck. Richie doesn’t want to move or blink or breathe or otherwise do anything that would disrupt this moment of peace. Just bask in it for his long as he can. The feeling of Eddie’s breath against his skin. His weight against Richie’s, the comforting pressure of just knowing he’s there.

“Hey, Rich,” he says.

“Hmm?”

“Love you.”

Richie can feel his breath catching in his throat. His heart beating out of his chest. Very rarely does Eddie ever say things like _love you_ where anyone else can hear. He is private and discerning with his feelings, when and where he expresses them out loud. Richie catches the smallest smile cross Mike’s face at the sound of it.

“I love you, too, Eds. I don’t even think you understand.”

“I have a pretty good idea,” Eddie yawns. “And don’t call me Eds.” And then he’s asleep, just like that.

The remaining three are silent for some time. There’s the ticking of the clock hanging above the television, all the hours marked by different types of birds. The sound of an upset dog barking in the distance. The wind is blowing strong enough that they can hear tree branches swaying. It’s beautiful and it’s alive in the softest way.

Then Mike says, “I want to stay here forever, in this exact moment.”

“Yeah,” Ben says, sounding sleepy. “I wish time could stand still for a while. I just want to be here with you guys.”

“Let’s stay up just a little while longer,” Mike says, looking down at Bill, pushing his hair out of his face, leaning over to give him a small kiss on the forehead. “Just so we can enjoy it for as long as we can. Drink it up, you know? We won’t have nights like this for much longer.”

“Mmmhmm,” Richie agrees, resting his head against Eddie’s, but he’s far too tired to stay up for much longer. He’s gone within a few minutes. The remaining two follow suit within the hour. Mike gently moves Bill’s head out of his lap and curls up next to him on the mattress. Ben falls asleep perfectly still as not to disturb Beverly.

The seven of them sleep peacefully, without stirring.

Richie and Eddie are sitting at the kitchen table with Maggie, it’s the middle of a mild winter afternoon, and the three of them are picking at a plate of fried green tomatoes. It’s as quiet as a mouse between them until a loud _THUNK_ against the kitchen window interrupts their peaceful silence.

“Now,” Maggie says, standing up and then balancing on the tips of her toes to look out the window. “That didn’t sound very good.”

Curious as to what could have caused the sudden noise, the three of them go outside through the rear patio at the far end of the kitchen and walk around to the window, where they see a dead blackbird lying on the ground.

“Oh no,” Eddie whispers. He grabs Maggie’s arm, scared. “That’s bad.”

Maggie places a comforting hand on his shoulder, but she can’t hide the anxious look on her face. “Indeed, indeed,” she says quietly.

“Maybe it’s just stunned,” Richie says, crouching down and looking closely at the bird. It’s still as a stone. He nudges it with his knuckles and there is no response. He looks up at Maggie over his shoulder. “What should we do? Do we bury it?”

“I suppose we should,” Maggie says. She goes to the toolshed around the other side of the house, leaving Richie and Eddie alone to observe the bad omen—a blackbird flying into your window means that difficult days are soon to come.

“I’m sure it’s okay,” Richie says, still sitting in the grass. “Old wives’ tales, you know?”

Maggie returns with a shovel and they bury the bird where it died. “Don’t worry your sweet little heads, okay?” she says, patting the soil down with the back of the shovel. “Don’t worry one bit, everything is going to be fine. Let’s just look out for each other, okay?”

“Sure thing,” Richie says, but he feels a certain sense of foreboding in the pit of his stomach. He looks over at Eddie, who is wringing his hands nervously.

“I’m gonna go call my mom,” Eddie says, “just to make sure she’s okay. Just to make sure she’s still alive.”

Sonia Kaspbrak is still alive and nearly succeeds at convincing Eddie to return home, sensing and exploiting his anxiety. She gives up in the end and she’s crying when Eddie ends the call. He tells her that he loves her, and she moans and wails in response. Her theatrics are getting more and more severe the older Eddie gets and the more comfortable he becomes with his own personhood. The less time he spends at home, the more she dissolves into hysterics whenever she’s given the chance. Her last-ditch effort to scare him into wasting away in that miserable house.

Later that evening, the distant sound of police sirens echoes through the serene mountain night. It’s a rather uncommon occurrence, as their town is what one might describe as _sleepy_ and not many bad things tend to happen—at least not that are easily publicized by way of calling the police.

Eddie sits on Richie’s bed with his knees hugged up against his chest and looks rather despondent. “Something bad probably happened,” he says. “Someone probably died. I just know it.”

It isn’t fair for Richie to tell Eddie to calm down, he figures. He has been just as influenced by superstition and old wives’ tales as anyone else in these mountains. He’s thrown his fair share of salt over his shoulder, he shares black-eyed peas with his parents for good luck on New Year’s Day, and generally accepts the belief that if he gets a sudden chill then someone has just stepped over the place he will one day be buried. But it hurts to see Eddie this way and not be able to say anything to assuage it.

“We won’t know until we know, Eds,” he says, and he wraps Eddie up in a hug. He’s surprised at how quickly Eddie relents his hedgehog-like posture and lets himself be completely enveloped in Richie’s arms. They stay like that for some time, not speaking, just holding onto each other, and silently working through the fear that comes from a dead blackbird buried out in the yard.

Eventually they doze off after moving further back on the bed and lying tangled up in each other, still wearing their day clothes. The sudden sound of the doorbell ringing wakes them up.

“Dude, it’s like… eleven at night,” Richie says, yawning and stretching his arms over his head. He stands up and opens his bedroom door in an effort to catch a bit of the conversation his parents are having with whoever is visiting at this strange hour.

When his mom lets out a horrified gasp that sounds halfway to a genuine bloodcurdling scream, Richie and Eddie exchange fearful glances and run to the top of the staircase to peek around the railing. There are two officers in the living room and Maggie is barely standing, held up by Wentworth with one arm while he uses the other to nervously run his hand through his hair.

Quietly, Richie and Eddie descend the stairs. The officers acknowledge them with synchronous nods of the head—no one tells them to leave, so they sit down together at the bottom of the staircase and try to piece together some meaning from the conversation.

“We can’t get in touch with her family in Virginia,” says one of the officers. “She said that she actually stays here most of the time, so we’re going to leave her here tonight and get in touch with her aunt tomorrow. Is that okay?”

“Of course, of course,” Maggie says, before she begins sobbing like Richie has never seen her cry before in his life. “Where is she? For God’s sake, get her in the house,” she cries.

“I’ll go get her,” the other officer says, and he retreats through the front door.

“Maggie,” Wentworth says, glancing back over his shoulder. “I’ll go talk to the boys.”

The remaining officer extends a hand to Maggie to hold her steady as Wentworth carefully releases his hold on her shoulders. Maggie begins asking him questions in a hushed voice, now aware that Richie and Eddie are within hearing distance of the conversation.

Wentworth turns around to face Richie and Eddie, his face stark white and his hands shaking. He approaches them slowly, as if they are caged animals, and he leans down on one knee in front of them. It’s uncomfortable—it isn’t like him; this isn’t the way he approaches difficult conversations. The concept of the importance of eye level when talking to children and the like, Wentworth Tozier never bought into that. He has maintained his appropriate, fatherly distance for the entirety of Richie’s life. And now here he is, crouched on the floor, looking terrified and guilty and sorrowed all at once.

“Boys,” he says. “I don’t know the best way to say this. I’ve never been in this position before.” He pauses and reaches out to put a hand on Richie’s knee. “Beverly’s parents are dead, boys. I’m sorry. I don’t know how else to tell you. She’s—”

They see her then—Beverly is standing in their doorway, overnight bag clenched tight in her hands, her face red and streaked with tears. She bypasses all questions from Maggie and the two officers, running straight to Richie and Eddie, barely giving Wentworth time to move out of her way. She collapses into them and sobs.

“Beverly,” Richie says, his voice cracking, the telltale sign of the tears he’s attempting to hold back.

“Bev, what can we do?” Eddie asks. Quieter then, he asks, “What are we supposed to do now?” His hands are shaking as he pets her hair.

She wipes her face on Eddie’s shirt. “Just hold on real tight,” she says, utterly broken.

Wentworth leaves them be, understanding that the three of them need their time together, and he rejoins Maggie and the two officers. They move their grownup conversation to the kitchen, where they proceed to talk over coffee and a cobbler Maggie made the previous day. That has always been a universal Tozier household indicator that it is time for the young ones to retreat upstairs.

It takes the effort of both Richie and Eddie to pull Beverly up to her feet, like she’s stuck in mud and will be sucked down under the earth if they don’t keep their hold on her. They walk with her up the stairs and into the guest bedroom where she falls on the bed, sobbing with such intensity that no sounds are leaving her.

Eddie sits down next to her, leaning over with his face so close to her ear that Richie can’t even hear what he’s whispering to her.

This is Eddie’s jurisdiction, Richie decides. Eddie has lost a parent. Richie hasn’t. There is very little Richie can offer in this exact moment, so he settles for silently rubbing her back as her labored breathing gradually evens out.

“He killed her,” Beverly finally says. Her voice is worn and scratchy. She doesn’t lift her head. Eddie straightens his posture slightly and looks at Richie nervously, then reaches out and plays with Beverly’s hair the way she’s always liked.

Beverly continues, “He killed her and then he killed himself. He couldn’t just do us all a favor and blow his own brains out, he had to blow Mama’s out first.” Then she’s wailing, caterwauling almost.

“Bev…” Richie sighs, but he can’t say anything beyond that. There is nothing in his pool of life experience, nothing in his understanding of the cruel realities of the world that will allow him to say anything that would be of value to her.

“Were you there when it happened?” Eddie asks. Beverly quiets herself down to sobs and hiccups. She nods. “I’m sorry, Beverly. I don’t know what else to say. I’m sorry.”

“You don’t gotta say anything,” Beverly says. “I just need you to be here with me. Don’t leave.”

The three of them spend the night together in the guest room and don’t get an hour of sleep between them.

**+**

Maggie and Wentworth assist Beverly in making funeral arrangements. Her aunt Evelyn called in tears to tell Beverly that she’s struggling to get the necessary time off of work to make the drive over the mountains, but she’s going to send her cousin Audra over soon. Then once the funeral is over, Beverly will head over the mountain with her aunt and cousin and she will finish the rest of her senior year in Virginia.

Beverly’s refusal to talk about her father frustrates the funeral director, but they eventually settle on cremation and a small graveside service. No church service, because Beverly doesn’t want one and she figures no one will want to show up any way on account of how many people hated her father. The ashes of her mother and father will be buried together in a grave plot next to her father’s parents.

“The funeral director thinks I’m some kind of heathen,” Beverly says with a dry laugh.

The seven of them are congregated in the old barn on the Hanlon’s farm, an old relic of the past that isn’t used for much more than storage since a larger barn was built several years back. Beverly is smoking and Stan is divvying up the rest of their moonshine supply in plastic cups.

“I said I didn’t give one flying fuck about my dad and I don’t think it’s right that I should be expected to care,” she goes on. “He said I would grow to regret that one day, so I needed to let an adult make my decisions for me. That made Mags and Went awful mad, though, I’ll tell ya. But… in the end, I decided to just let it happen. My mamaw bought that plot for my dad and whoever was unlucky enough to marry him, so…”

“I think you did the right thing,” Mike says. The others murmur in general agreement. “But sometimes the right thing doesn’t always feel good. You know?”

“Feels weird, all y’all looking at me like I’m something pitiful.” Beverly sniffs and wipes at the corner of her eyes. “I hate crying… Hate feeling anything.” She takes a sip of moonshine and does her best not to wince.

Eddie sits with his head rested on her shoulder. Ben sits on her other side, holding her hand tightly in his. There is a unspoken sense of shared loss between the three of them. Beverly allows their love to reach her. Though neither Eddie nor Ben have many memories of their departed fathers, they still have their own aching chasms in their hearts and Beverly accepts from them just a little more than she’s willing to accept from anyone else.

“You’re g-g-gonna leave, huh,” Bill says sadly.

“Yeah. My aunt insists. I’m not in any position to argue.” She’s crying freely now, tears running down her face. She takes another drink. Her cigarette is forgotten between her fingers. Ash falls onto the fabric of her dress. Eddie dusts it off for her.

“It’s only a couple hours away,” Richie says.

“Yeah.” Beverly smiles at that. A small, sad smile, but a real smile. “With the new tunnel. Y’all can come see me whenever. You’re gonna like Audra, I think. She’ll be here tomorrow morning.” She says it like _tomorrah mornin_ ’ as her accent slips out more and more.

They talk and drink together well into the early hours of the morning, only dispersing when Jessica peeks her head in through the barn door and tells them that Beverly needs her sleep or else her emotional constitution won’t be strong for the upcoming days. They keep the moonshine hidden, hug and cry for a moment, and then go their separate ways.

Richie drives them back into town and Eddie insists that he needs to go home—it’s been far too long since he has spent more than ten minutes with his mother, as he has been taking refuge at the Tozier residence more and more lately. This makes Richie feel a certain kind of way, something sort of negative, but he isn’t going to argue with Eddie’s newly realized fear that his mother is going to fall over dead at any moment. He just thinks Beverly needs Eddie, is all, but she seems to be unbothered by Eddie’s need to spend the night at his own home.

“Sorry ‘bout all this,” Beverly says as they approach the Tozier home. “You having to babysit me and all.”

“Don’t say things like that,” Richie says, pulling into the driveway and parking the car a little crooked on account of the moonshine. Definitely not his finest moment, and furthermore he can’t even believe Eddie rode in the car with him in this state, but sometimes Eddie manages to surprise him.

They try their best to stay quiet going through the front door, although Maggie and Wentworth went to bed earlier with a pretty good idea of how the kids would be spending their Friday night and simply asked for them to be careful and get home safely.

Richie sees Beverly off to the guest room and tells her goodnight with a kiss on the cheek, but she grabs his arm as he moves to turn away towards his own room. “Please stay with me,” she grumbles, embarrassed.

It isn’t like Maggie and Wentworth have had to sit down with Richie and Beverly and lay out ground rules about sleeping arrangements in an attempt to curb any type of salacious behavior, but they’ve always been a bit old-fashioned about things like that and Richie knows they might have questions in the morning. Since these are special circumstances, he figures they’ll be understanding.

The bed in the guest room is bigger and more comfortable than Richie’s. Beverly has often asked why he doesn’t just switch rooms, especially with how much Eddie has been staying over lately. It surely isn’t comfortable for them to both sleep in a twin sized bed. But Richie is sentimental and struggles with the notion of change sometimes. He likes his room. He likes his bed. He likes Eddie, in his room, in his bed. He isn’t quite ready for that to change.

“I get that,” Beverly says. She pulls off her sweater and her dress, sitting in nothing but her bra and thick wool stockings. “It hurts when things change sometimes, even if it’s for the better.”

Richie kicks off his boots and removes his jacket, folding it and setting it down on the chest of drawers where Beverly keeps her clothes and a few knickknacks from her house. “I used to feel like I had a good grasp on everything in my life,” he says. “Like it was going to stay the same forever. Like nothing was ever gonna change, because I wasn’t gonna let it.”

“It isn’t possible,” Beverly says lightly. “Things change no matter what, when you grow up.” She peels her stockings off and reaches down to the foot of her bed for a wrinkled up, oversized sleeping shirts, pulls it over her head and smooths over her hair.

Richie kicks off his jeans, left in just a t-shirt and boxers. “My mom is going to box my ears if she sees I slept in here with no pants on,” he laughs. The two of them crawl into bed. The sheets are crisp and cold from where the insulation on this end of the house isn’t so great, so it takes a few minutes for their body heat to calibrate the temperature of the bed.

“You ever think about telling her? About you and Eddie?” Beverly asks.

“Every single day, at this point,” Richie says. “He doesn’t want me to. He’s scared.”

“I think they’ll be fine with it. They’re gonna have to find out eventually… I really don’t think they’re going to love you any less or nothin’ like that, Richie.”

“Yeah. That’s how I feel, too. But Eddie—I don’t think he can imagine it. You know. People loving him unconditionally. And if he doesn’t want me to do something… I’m not gonna push it. I don’t care what we do. I just want him to be comfortable.”

“You let Eddie call the shots,” Beverly says. Her tone is strange. Richie doesn’t know what to say, so he waits for her to continue. “You’re plain stupid over him. It worries me sometimes, Richie.”

Richie turns on his side and props up on his elbow to face her. She turns to face him, too. “Stan kind of said something similar,” he admits.

“You’ve always been foolish for him. Ever since we were kids. I just don’t want y’all to get hurt… if ever the time comes to make some difficult decisions about what you’re gonna do with your lives.”

“I’m not worried about it,” Richie says, feeling rather defensive. 

“Of course you aren’t. You can’t even think straight over him. And Eddie—I have no idea what goes through his head lately, if I’m being honest. It’s just… Richie, things are going to change real soon. I just want you guys to be on the same page with each other.”

Richie rolls onto his back and stares up at the ceiling. He can’t look at her like this, not when she’s burrowed so deep into him it’s like she can read all of his thoughts. “This is the last thing you need to be worrying about right now,” he says.

“Yeah, suppose you’re right,” Beverly says, turning onto her side to face the wall. “Well, in any case, you know I love you both more than anything. And I’ll be here to help you if you need it. G’night, Rich. I’ll see ya in the morning.” 

**+**

The doorbell rings around noontime and Richie opens the door to see a tall, copper-haired girl who looks very much like Beverly standing on the front porch, small suitcase in hand.

“Richie?” she asks.

“Uh, yeah,” Richie says.

“I’m Audra!” she says, and then she pulls him into an aggressive hug. “Beverly’s told me so much about you, I feel like we’re already best friends.”

“Oh,” Richie says, stunned. He invites Audra inside and they wait together in the living room for Beverly to get out of the shower. He takes a good look at her—she’s pretty, sloped nose, big eyes, a willowy frame. Movie star pretty, Richie thinks. Has that same magnetic pull to her as Beverly, a resonating charm that just makes you want to stare at her for minute.

“I’m glad Beverly has you,” Audra says, very sincerely.

“Yeah, well. I’m trying my best,” Richie says, feeling like he isn’t going to meet her expectations in the end. Beverly has been building up this idyllic vision of Richie to Audra for years now and at the current moment, he doesn’t feel like he’s living up to that. 

“I want to meet everyone else. Match names to faces,” she says, and before Richie can say anything in return, Beverly comes stomping down the stairs. Once she spots Audra sitting on the couch, she makes a mad dash over to her and they tangle themselves up in a big hug. They look just like sisters.

“Thank God you’re here,” Beverly whispers.

“I know. Sorry I didn’t make it up here yesterday, there was some ice on the roads and Mama was flipping her fucking shit over it,” Audra says. Beverly pulls away from the hug and takes a seat beside her. “So tell me the plan.”

“Graveside service is on Monday,” Beverly explains. “We’re on winter break right now, so I’m not missing school or nothin’. Then we’ll come back here after. And then I guess…” She looks at Richie. He looks away. He isn’t ready to accept the fact that Beverly will be leaving them. And he knows that isn’t fair. Knows it isn’t right to be ruminating on any kind of negative feeling when Beverly is going through the worst time of her life. But God, he’s going to miss her. He’s going to miss her so much he feels like he’s bleeding inside over it.

“Anyway,” Beverly continues, wiping the tears forming at the corner of her eyes and then clapping her hands together, “how about we take you around town?”

**+**

They pick Eddie up at his house and Sonia is beside herself at the realization that there is now a second _dirty filthy girl_ in their ranks. She paws at Eddie’s sweater as he skips down the porch steps. He turns around and waves goodbye and tells her that he loves her, and Richie thinks that’s much more than she deserves.

Eddie climbs into the backseat, where Audra immediately pounces. “Oh my God,” she coos, grabbing him by the chin and observing his face from every angle. “You’re pretty just like a girl,” she sighs.

“Oh. Thank you. That’s not really a compliment when I hear it from people at school, though,” Eddie says, and Audra laughs. She squeezes his face, causing his words to come out slurred. “I take it you’re Audra,” he manages to get out.

“Is there anything we need to _tell_ Audra?” Richie asks Beverly. They turn right by the Methodist church, then left towards the edge of town where the Uris house sits at the top of a neighborhood called Ivy Hill.

“Oh,” Beverly says. “Well…” She trails off.

“It’s okay if she knows,” Richie says. “We aren’t gonna be mad if you tell her.” He adds, “At least _I’m_ not gonna be mad,” and glances at Eddie in the rearview mirror, who looks rather sour at the sound of that. And that fills Richie with a strange sort of satisfaction, even though he knows that isn’t a good thing. Like he’s having to dig up some old childhood desire to do literally anything to get Eddie’s attention, even make him angry.

“It’s fine,” Eddie says, but he doesn’t sound too happy about it.

Beverly explains their story like she’s recounting the plot of a forbidden Southern gothic romance. Audra is fascinated by this, says it’s _amazing_ , and then she says they’re _brave_ , and Eddie squirms awkwardly in his seat.

Stan is waiting for them outside of his house when they arrive. Eddie scoots over towards the middle to allow room for him in the back and he politely introduces himself to Audra. She goes through the usual questions about what it must be like for him as the only Jewish kid in the county.

“You get right to the point, huh?” Stan asks.

“We don’t have a lot of time,” Audra says.

They drive out to the Hanlon’s farm, where Bill, Ben, and Mike are sitting on the front porch drinking warm tea with lemon at the insistence of Jessica, who believes it is the best way to fight the cold. Will and Jessica have set aside some dry rotted wood and brush for them to start a burn pile later, if they so please, but in the meantime, they move into the old barn.

Audra fits in well with everyone. However, she asks a lot of questions with very little tact that occasionally leaves them all very caught off guard and has Beverly trailing behind her with apologies. They recount things like Eddie’s broken arm, the time they visited the murder house, the more eventful happenings in their tiny town. See, Audra is from a city. It’s a city that has a population of roughly fifty-thousand people, which may not be big elsewhere in the country, but it’s pretty big in this neck of the woods. She thinks it’s funny that there’s only one stoplight here, that the only fast food joint is a Dairy Hut, and that elementary and middle schoolers all attend class in the same building.

She doesn’t mean funny in a bad way. It’s interesting. She asks a lot of genuine questions. She is strangely in tune with any aspect of their respective identities that make it difficult for them to feel like they can comfortably live in the confines of a coal mining town in Appalachia. Beverly must have told her a lot about them over the years.

“Your mom is, like, insane, right?” she asks Eddie.

“Audra…” Beverly groans.

“Something like that,” Eddie says, pointedly unamused by the question. 

He looks to Richie for help and this melts Richie’s heart, so he interrupts them to announce that they still have enough moonshine for the lot of them to get reasonably drunk on, and Mike goes to fetch the jug which is hidden behind a large pile of plywood.

“Holy shit,” Audra gasps. “Real moonshine?”

“Sure ‘nuff,” Mike says, passing the jug to her.

She takes an impressively large drink and swallows it down no problem. “Whew! I forgot you guys live in a dry county. I’ll have to get some of this to take home before I leave.”

“Audra’s been drinking hard liquor since she was ‘bout nine,” Beverly explains. She grabs the jug and takes a small sip and passes it off to Ben, who declines surely because he wants to look after Beverly tonight, and then passes it to Richie. 

The conversation takes a pleasant turn, lighthearted topics abound, and questions are turned towards Audra which allows her to talk about all the nice things that come with living in a decently sized city. She invites them all to visit no less than ten times and they all agree that it would be fun to take a trip together over the mountains and spend some time elsewhere for a while.

By the time most of them are close to drunk, Eddie silently takes his leave from the group and leaves the barn. Richie does not immediately notice this until Bill moves to follow him. The others are caught up in a boisterous conversation about Dollywood and all of Dolly Parton’s other tourist attractions—how much they would need to scrape together to visit all three in a single weekend and have enough left over for a hotel afterwards.

Richie watches Bill peek his head out of the barn door. He stands there for a moment, clearly having a conversation with Eddie, and then leaves as well, closing the crooked wooden door behind him. Maybe it’s wrong of him, but instead of joining the two of them outside, Richie silently approaches the door and sits down next to a knothole in the wall where he can overhear what they are saying. They are both sitting with their backs against the side of the barn and if Richie so much as breathes too loud, they’ll probably hear him.

“It’s okay. To get overwhelmed sometimes,” Bill says. He’s been talking slowly tonight, trying his hardest to conceal his stutter since they have company.

“I think Richie’s mad at me,” Eddie says. “I think he’s mad because… I don’t like telling people about us yet. He’s hardly said a word to me since he picked me up earlier.”

It feels like Eddie has reached directly into Richie’s chest and grabbed his beating heart. It is physically painful to hear Eddie say this and hurts even worse when Richie realizes that yeah, maybe he is a little angry. Maybe he is a little hurt.

“I think. You know what I’m g-gonna say, Eddie,” Bill says.

Richie doesn’t want to hear any evidence that Eddie and Bill are regularly having emotional conversations of this caliber with one another, so he stands up and opens the barn door. They both look up at him but say nothing for a moment. The three of them look at each other like they’re trapped in a competition of who can stay silent the longest.

“I’m gonna, uh,” Bill says finally, rising up to his feet, “go back in with everyone.” He gives Richie a very meaningful nod and moves past him, back into the barn, closing the door behind him.

Eddie wordlessly gestures to where Bill was sitting.

“I’m not mad at you,” Richie says. Then he sits down, just close enough to Eddie that their shoulders are touching. “I mean, I think I kind of was. But I’m not anymore.”

“What’s the difference?”

“The difference is that I was getting all upset about something without talking to you and now I realize what I was doing. And I don’t want to sit here and be mad at you over something stupid, especially not with everything going on.”

“It isn’t stupid,” Eddie says. “It isn’t stupid, you can’t say that it’s something stupid, because I know it’s really important to you.”

“Well, sure, yeah. It’s important to me that we can just be open and honest about who we are, but you’re… more important to me than any of that,” Richie says. He reaches over and grabs Eddie’s hand, pleasantly surprised when Eddie doesn’t instinctively pull away from him. “What you feel is important to me, Eddie.”

Eddie leans in, rests his head on Richie’s shoulder. “I don’t like it when I feel you’re ignoring me on purpose.”

“I know.”

“I don’t like it when I feel like you’re trying to punish me by keeping your attention from me. I don’t like it and it isn’t right.”

“I know. And I’m sorry, Eddie. Really, I am,” Richie says. He leans forward just a bit, just enough to see Eddie’s face, try and discern what could possibly be going through his head right now.

Eddie’s brow is furrowed and his mouth is twisted into a deep frown. “I’m sorry, too,” he says softly.

“You don’t have to be sorry, Eds.”

“Shut up. Just let me be sorry. Please.”

They are silent for a moment. Then Eddie turns towards Richie, angles himself just so that he can kiss his cheek. Richie turns to face him and closes the distance between their lips gently, not asking for too much. An assuring, comforting kiss, an _I’m here, and so are you, and that’s enough_ kiss.

“I love you, Richie. I don’t want you to think I don’t,” Eddie says. He swallows hard. His lips tremble. He wants to cry, but he won’t, and Richie has never understood how Eddie always manages to hold back like that. “Don’t forget. Okay? Even if you get mad at me. Just don’t forget that. It would _kill_ me, Richie, it would really fucking kill me if I thought you felt unloved… by me.”

“Yeah,” Richie says dumbly. He’s crying, like an idiot. Like Beverly said—he’s stupid over Eddie. He’s always been foolish for Eddie. Eddie could say anything in this moment and Richie would take it, hold it close, cherish it. “I love you so much it’s irresponsible.”

Eddie laughs. He kisses Richie once more and then stands up, extending his hand to Richie and pulling him up to his feet. “We need to go inside. I don’t want Beverly to think anything’s wrong. She has enough to worry about right now,” he says.

Richie nods. He soaks up the way Eddie looks under the moonlight. It hits the open farmland in the best way, drenching Eddie in a soft glow. Like something straight out of Richie’s most tender dreams. They head back into the barn together.

The graveside service is small. Beverly’s aunt cries into a handkerchief the whole time. Everyone’s parents show up with the exception of Sonia Kaspbrak, but she has a lovely flower arrangement sent, which surprises everyone.

Beverly doesn’t cry, even though it’s obvious that she wants to. She kisses her hand and presses it against the urn which holds her mother’s ashes. She gives a long, damning look at the urn which holds her father’s ashes.

The Marshes never attended a church consistently in their lives, so Maggie suggested that the priest from the Methodist church speak at the service. He gives a light, gentle sermon about worldly pain and the final reward of heaven. Beverly grabs Richie’s hand and holds it tight. She’s never said before if she believes in all that.

She has a short eulogy prepared and speaks mostly of her mother. Fond memories, how hard she worked supporting their family, and all the things she’ll miss about her. She mentions her father, calling back to early childhood memories of going fishing together, the time he taught her how to change the tire on a car, and the way he would always stop his car to move turtles off the road so they wouldn’t get run over.

The ashes are lowered into the plot. The small crowd disperses and Beverly cries when she thinks no one is looking.

**+**

Beverly packs up her clothes and some sentimental belongings. They all meet up at Richie’s house to say goodbye.

She hugs the other six one by one, individually promising each of them that she’ll be back and forth between Kentucky and Virginia a few times with Evelyn to get more of her things and to deal with grownup business concerning the house.

“Hey,” she says, pressing her forehead against Ben’s. He’s crying. She leans forward and gives him a quick kiss on the lips. “I’m just running ahead a little bit. Catch up with me,” she says.

He nods. “I’ll—catch up, I’ll catch up with you, Bev,” he stutters. “I promise. Just wait for me, okay?”

“Okay,” she says. She hugs him, squeezing him with everything in her, and pulls away like it’s physically hurting her to do so. Audra is waiting for her, car started and ready to go. She gives them all one last wave, opens the door and climbs into the passenger seat.

She looks at them through the window, and she finally, openly lets them see that she’s crying. They watch in silence as she’s taken away from them.

**Author's Note:**

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